Technologies

Best VR Headsets of 2022

Guess what? The Quest 2 still remains the best.

VR still isn’t an essential experience for anyone, but it can be a lot of fun and surprisingly useful at times. The hardware, however, is currently in transition. Sony’s $550 PSVR 2, which requires a PlayStation 5, arrives Feb. 22 but is available for preorder. There’s been a wave of new VR headsets lately, including the $1,500 Meta Quest Pro and the not-available-in-the-US Pico 4. Apple’s rumored headset should be on its way in 2023, along with the Quest 3. And yet, right now, the 2-year-old Meta Quest 2 is still by far the best choice. Right now, a couple of our favorite VR headsets also have Black Friday sales: the Quest 2 and HP Reverb G2.

The cost of a new VR headset might be going up these days, and the $400 Quest 2 jumped up in price earlier this year (it used to be $299, but is back on sale for $350 in a limited Black Friday bundle). Even so, it still offers a completely wireless experience, with access to a great library of fantastic games like Resident Evil 4 and The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners. It can also be connected to a PC to play titles like Half-Life: Alyx, or run a variety of PC VR applications. Meta keeps improving its software over time with added extras.

Anyone in the VR/AR industry looking to explore next-gen face tracking or mixed reality might consider the Quest Pro, but its high price means it won’t make sense for anyone else right now. Keep in mind, Meta is releasing the Quest 3 next year, at a price expected to be similar to the Quest 2 and possibly with some features that are on the Quest Pro. (The Pico 4 gives some hints of how the Quest 3 could be upgraded.) You might want to wait for it, or for the other VR headsets on the horizon.

Apple is expected to have some form of advanced VR/AR headset next year that could also be super expensive. Sony’s PlayStation VR 2, also coming in 2023, requires a PlayStation 5 but has fantastic new controllers and could boast unique games. And in the meantime, we may see more experimental, phone-connected headsets like the HTC Vive Flow start to pop up.

VR in 2022 remains an impressive but still limited proposition. Thanks to tremendous advancements in the visuals, tracking and overall performance of VR hardware, the best VR headset options have become more realistic and immersive. More advanced metaverse platforms and social worlds have given VR owners more to explore, too. Even so, VR still hasn’t become a necessary product for most people.

VR’s strongest applications tend to be gaming and fitness. For fitness, a standalone headset like the Quest 2 is practically mandatory, to avoid wire tangles and make sure you can move around. (The Quest 2 also has a fitness tracker app and syncs with Apple Health.)

Will you want a headset that works with your phone? Qualcomm’s been making headway on a wave of VR and AR headsets that plug right into phones, but at the moment the software for these devices is a work in progress. Neither Google nor Apple really supports VR at a seamless system level for phones yet, meaning devices have to figure out awkward solutions.

If you’re a PC gamer,a PC-connected VR headset still offers the most versatile collection of software for an immersive VR experience, and also lets you use that headset for creative and business tools. Note that a more powerful VR systemwill still be largely tethered to a desktop or laptop and may require external sensors.

And what about console gaming? The aging PlayStation VRstill exists, but you’re better off waiting for the PSVR 2 if you have a PS5.

We update this best VR headset list periodically, but note that prices are subject to change.

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Technologies

Yes, This Swimming RoboTurtle Is Adorable. It Also Has an Important Environmental Mission

Beatbot is best known for making pool-cleaning robots, but it was its swimming robot turtle that won our hearts at CES 2026.

Few things in life have made me feel more privileged and awestruck than the opportunity to swim with sea turtles in their natural environment. The way in which these gentle creatures navigate through their underwater world with their deliberate and careful fin strokes is utterly mesmerizing to watch.

It’s a distinctive style of movement — so much so that when I saw Beatbot’s RoboTurtle swim across a water tank on the show floor at CES 2026, I knew that this wasn’t simply just a pool cleaner robot with turtle features tacked on. This was a studied example of biomimicry in action.

The reason for this is that the company’s engineers went on a two-month expedition to study sea turtles in their natural environment, Beatbot’s Eduardo Campo told me as we watched Turtini (the team’s affectionate nickname for RoboTurtle) splash around in its pool. «We did a lot of motion capture, like the things they use in movies, because we need to develop those joints that it has,» he said.

This isn’t RoboTurtle’s first time at CES — it also appeared in 2025 as a static concept. This is the year, however, it’s found its fins, so to speak. Not only can it swim, but it can also respond to hand gestures: I throw it an OK gesture, and it dances in response. But as cute and limber as it is, RoboTurtle is a robot with an important mission.

RoboTurtle is an environmental research tool, built with input from researchers and NGOs, which can go where humans or other machines cannot for fear of disturbing complex and delicate underwater ecosystems, particularly coral reefs. It can move silently and naturally in a way that won’t scare wildlife, monitoring water quality and fish numbers with its built-in camera.

«One of the groups that we’re working with, they want to study the coral reefs in near Indonesia,» said Campo. «There was a very big incident over there with a boat that came up onto a coral reef and it disrupted the environment, [so] they want the least intrusive robot possible.»

The group wants to deploy RoboTurtle for certain periods every year to monitor the recovery of the coral and monitor the fish population, he added. Beatbot is currently training the built-in AI to give RoboTurtle monitoring and recognition skills.

At CES, I watched RoboTurtle paddle about only on the surface of the pool, but it can also dive down up to five meters. However, it needs to resurface to send data and its GPS signal back to base, much like a real turtle that needs to come to the surface to breathe. This also gives it a chance to recharge via the solar panel on its back.

Even though I was impressed with RoboTurtle’s swimming ability, Campo estimates that the Beatbot team is still a year and a half away from perfecting its technique, with the robot ready for full deployment in between three to five years.

CES 2026 is a show where tech with a real purpose feels scarce, so it sure is refreshing to see a company use its expertise to build something designed with a sustainable future in mind. It might be a while until we see RoboTurtle take to the seas, but I’m glad that I got to witness it at this stage of its journey.

Technologies

These Tiny Robots Are Smaller Than Grains of Salt and Can Think, Move and Swim

Despite their size, the robots can navigate liquids, respond to their environment and operate without external control.

Robots smaller than a grain of salt? It sounds like science fiction, but researchers have developed autonomous microrobots that can move through liquids, sense their environment and operate independently using only light as a power source.

The microrobots, developed by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania and the University of Michigan, measure roughly 200 by 300 by 50 micrometers. Yet they can detect temperature changes, follow programmed paths and function independently for months at a time.

Their work was reported this week in two scientific journals, Science Robotics and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

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«We’ve made autonomous robots 10,000 times smaller,» senior author Marc Miskin, assistant professor in electrical and systems engineering at Penn Engineering, said in a statement. «That opens up an entirely new scale for programmable robots.»

Powered entirely by light, the robots don’t move using mechanical limbs. Instead, they generate tiny electrical fields that push ions (electrically charged particles) in fluid to create motion, an approach better suited to the unique physics of the microscopic world, where traditional motors don’t work.

Unlike earlier microrobots, these devices combine sensing, computing, decision-making and movement in a single, self-contained system at an extremely small scale.

Previous efforts in microrobotics have often relied on external controls, such as magnetic fields or physical tethers, to guide movement. These new microrobots, however, incorporate their own miniature solar cell-powered processors, allowing them to respond to their environment, communicate through patterned movements visible under a microscope and carry out tasks without outside direction.

Potential applications include monitoring biological processes at the cellular level, supporting medical diagnostics or helping assemble tiny devices. Because each robot can be mass-produced at very low cost, the technology opens new avenues for research and engineering at scales that were previously unreachable.

Technologies

Today’s NYT Mini Crossword Answers for Wednesday, Jan. 7

Here are the answers for The New York Times Mini Crossword for Jan. 7.

Looking for the most recent Mini Crossword answer? Click here for today’s Mini Crossword hints, as well as our daily answers and hints for The New York Times Wordle, Strands, Connections and Connections: Sports Edition puzzles.

Need some help with today’s Mini Crossword? I thought today’s was a tough one — I couldn’t solve too many of the Across clues and had to move on to the Down clues to fill in the answers. Also … look at the answer for 3-Down! Are we using Gen Z slang now as if everyone knows it? Anyway, if you want all the answers, read on. And if you could use some hints and guidance for daily solving, check out our Mini Crossword tips.

If you’re looking for today’s Wordle, Connections, Connections: Sports Edition and Strands answers, you can visit CNET’s NYT puzzle hints page.

Read more: Tips and Tricks for Solving The New York Times Mini Crossword

Let’s get to those Mini Crossword clues and answers.