Device Categories

Pocket-sized electronics live the hardest life of any category we cover. They get dropped, sat on, drenched in the rain, and charged from whatever cable happens to be lying around. The categories below address the wear patterns that result from that kind of daily abuse — battery degradation, screen damage, charging port failures, pairing trouble, and the slow software bloat that makes a two-year-old phone feel ten years old.

Smartphones Tablets Smartwatches & Fitness Trackers Wireless Earbuds & Headphones Portable Speakers E-Readers Action Cameras

Desktops, laptops, monitors, and the storage and accessories that surround them. This is where most readers arrive when a fan starts howling, a screen develops a strange line down the middle, or a familiar workflow suddenly stops working after a routine update. We focus on the components that fail predictably — drives, fans, batteries, power supplies, and ports — and on the everyday maintenance that quietly prevents most of those failures in the first place.

Windows Laptops Desktop PCs Computer Monitors External Hard Drives & SSDs USB Hubs & Docking Stations Webcams & Microphones Graphics Cards / GPUs

Connected devices are wonderful when they work and unusually frustrating when they do not. Most smart-home headaches trace back to one of three root causes: a flaky home network, an outdated firmware build, or a hub that has quietly lost its pairing. The pages in this group explain how to tell which of those is happening, how to recover gracefully, and how to set things up so the same problem is far less likely to come back next month.

Smart TVs Smart Home Devices Smart Doorbells & Security Cameras Smart Thermostats Smart Lighting Systems Smart Locks & Door Sensors Wi-Fi Mesh Systems

Audio, video, and gaming gear gets used hard and often gets blamed for problems that actually live elsewhere — a slow streaming app is usually a router issue, a stuttering game console is usually a thermal one, and a soundbar that goes silent at random is usually a handshake fault on the HDMI chain. We try to separate the genuine hardware faults from the everyday network and configuration gremlins so you spend your time fixing the right thing.

Streaming Devices Soundbars & Home Theatre Systems Gaming Consoles Gaming Headsets VR Headsets Blu-ray & DVD Players Digital Photo Frames

The unsung infrastructure of a household. Routers, surge protectors, charging accessories, and the various adapters that quietly keep everything else fed and connected. When this layer misbehaves, half a dozen unrelated devices can suddenly seem broken at the same time, which makes power and connectivity issues some of the most rewarding to learn about — fix one cause, and a queue of nagging problems goes away at once.

Wireless Routers & Modems Power Banks & Portable Chargers Surge Protectors & Extension Cords Bluetooth Adapters HDMI Switches & Splitters Wireless Charging Pads

The little things that sit on a desk and quietly determine how pleasant a computer is to use every day. Mechanical keyboards develop sticky switches, gaming mice grow erratic with worn sensors, drawing tablets lose pen pressure after a firmware update, and laptop cooling pads become surprisingly important the moment a summer heatwave arrives. The pages here cover the small replacements, calibrations, and cleanings that put these accessories back into reliable service.

Mechanical Keyboards Gaming Mice & Trackpads Drawing Tablets Laptop Cooling Pads Card Readers & Flash Drives