Gaming headsets usually look like gaming headsets. They’re usually made of glowing plastic, features odd angles and enough visual clutter to make you embarrassed wearing them outside the house, and sound like something a bomber pilot would user in 1945. The $199 SteelSeries Arctis Nova 7 Gen 2 avoids most of that nonsense. It looks restrained, is surprisingly light, and does almost everything well enough that you stop thinking about the hardware and just use it.

The Arctis Nova 7 Gen 2 sits in the middle of the SteelSeries lineup, below the Nova Pro but above the cheaper entry-level sets. It is designed as a multi-platform wireless headset for PC, PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and mobile devices. The main selling point is versatility. You can run low-latency 2.4GHz wireless and Bluetooth at the same time, which means you can game on your PC while taking a call from your phone without switching devices. It includes audio cables for connecting directly to your computer or audio device as well as a dedicated wireless dongle for phones.

The design is familiar if you have used SteelSeries gear before. There is a suspended elastic headband, breathable fabric ear cushions, and a retractable microphone that disappears neatly into the ear cup when you do not need it. The construction mixes matte plastic with a metal headband and avoids the cheap creaking feel that plagues a lot of wireless gaming gear. Mute and volume controls are on left side of the headset with the microphone and there are power and bluetooth controls on the right side along with a slider to manage “ChatMix” which brings the game or the in-game chatter to the fore.

Battery life is one of the biggest improvements in the Gen 2 version. SteelSeries claims up to 54 hours on a charge, which is a substantial jump over the older Nova 7. In real-world use, I saw solid battery life of about 40 hours before I needed to charge the headset. In fact, battery life is so good you might end up forgetting to charge your headset.

The sound signature leans clean rather than exaggerated. Bass is present but not absurdly boosted, and the headset works well for music in addition to gaming. SteelSeries also pushes its Sonar software heavily, offering game-specific EQ presets and parametric controls for people who want to fine-tune things endlessly.

Remember: this is not an audiophile headset. You will absolutely noticed a difference between this headset and, say, a properly powered and amped audio-only headset. Drum and Bass and game music sounded great on this headset, but you’re absolutely going to notice a bit of tinniness when listening to fiddly guitar or treble sounds. Interestingly, these cans offer excellent noise repression thanks to their cushy ear pads and closed cups.

What’s most important thing is that these headphones are comfortable. I wore them for a good eight hours one day and barely noticed them. I love the analog wheel for volume and the retractable microphone is extremely handy. Again, this is a gaming headset so the question here is comfort in front of a screen instead of comfort on a train or plane.

The weak point is probably the microphone. It is usable for Discord, multiplayer games, and casual calls, but several folks noted that it sounds thinner and less natural than competing headsets in the same price range. That said, most people buying a headset like this are not recording podcasts or streaming professionally. For normal gaming use it gets the job done.

Another interesting addition is SteelSeries app that allows you to control a number of audio features and even tune the headset for certain games. As someone who rarely, if ever, downloads the app for a pair of headphones I probably would never use it but it’s nice to know they’ve thought of all audiences.

What I like most about the Nova 7 Gen 2 is that it does not scream “gamer.” You could wear these on a train or in a coffee shop without looking like you are about to join an esports tournament. The headset folds into daily life fairly naturally, and that matters more than most gaming companies seem to realize. SteelSeries even lets you swap out the decorations on the ear pads, something quite clever. The company sells “Booster Packs” from different designers and you can pick them up for about $20 to customize your headphones.

SteelSeries has spent years refining this design rather than reinventing it, and that is probably the right call. The Nova 7 Gen 2 is not flashy but it definitely works. Because it includes a number of input and output methods, you can use it with your phone, your laptop, your console, and your gaming PC with equal success. And at $199 you’re getting something that sounds acceptable even when you’re not stabbing aliens on a deserted space station.

Last month, we talked to you about a new collection from Marathon (seen here) that actually crossed over a few of their different models. If you were interested, but wondered how it was hands-on, wonder no more. While we didn’t go hands-on with the Anthracite series, the Marathon 41mm Arctic GSAR is function (if not aesthetically) the same.

Marathon 41mm Arctic GSAR: what it is

Here, the model name tells you a lot of what you need to know. 41mm is the case size, and the GSAR nomenclature let’s you know that this is one of their divers, part of the Government Search-and-Rescue series. Here, that’s actually not a marketing name. Marathon, based out of Canada, actually sells their watches to governments. In other words, these are watches meant for actual use, not just to look the part. No-frills tool watches meant to be used - what’s not to like?

Wrapping things up

Want to get yours? As with other Marathon releases, you’ve got some choices, mostly around the strap or bracelet configuration. Our loaner was the three-piece rubber strap version, which comes in at $2,000. Go to the steel bracelet, you’re adding $400; opting for the all-black versions bumps the price up more. Check out the variants, and order yours, directly over at marathonwatch.com

Marathon 41mm Arctic GSAR Tech Specs

• Movement: Sellita SW200-1 with Incabloc Shock Absorber

• No of Jewels: 26

• Scale Quantity: 2

• Scale Range: 1-12 (13-24)

• Calendar Type: Date

• Luminous Features: Tritium Gas Tubes and MaraGlo

• Crystal Material: Sapphire

• Crown Type: Screw-Down

• Case Material: 316L Stainless Steel

• Case Finish: Brushed

• Bezel Type: Uni-Directional

• Bezel Scale: 60 Minute

• Submersibility: 30 ATM

• Dimensions:

  • 41mm diameter

  • 14mm thickness

  • 48mm lug-to-lug

  • 20mm lug width

Swatch and Audemars Piguet broke the Internet last week by teasing something called the Royal Pop, a mashup of Swatch looks and Royal Oak class that had everyone confused. Similar to their work with Omega and Blancpain, the Royal Pop was supposed to be a collab that brought the design language created by the horologers at AP into the world of fast, Swatchy fashion.

The result is something that has everyone either scratching their heads or lining up at Swatch stores.

First, a bit about the Pop line. Swatch released the first Pops in 1986. The gimmick was simple: you could wear the watches on a strap or on a necklace and they were big and bold, unlike the traditional Swatch watches folks were used to. Basically, they looked something like this:

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The Swatch SCUBAQUA collection feels like the company remembering what it does best. To understand what that means, let’s talk a little about the history of Swatch.

Swatch was born in 1983, at a moment when the Swiss watch industry looked close to collapse. Cheap quartz watches from Japan, especially from brands like Seiko and Citizen, had gutted the traditional Swiss market during the 1970s. Many Swiss firms were overloaded with costs and stuck making complicated mechanical watches while consumers were buying inexpensive battery-powered models instead.

The new company emerged from a restructuring effort led by Nicolas G. Hayek, who helped merge two struggling Swiss watch groups, ASUAG and SSIH, into what later became the Swatch Group. Engineers including Elmar Mock and Jacques Müller worked on a radically simple idea: a Swiss-made quartz watch built with far fewer parts, housed in plastic, cheap to manufacture, and sold as a fashion object rather than a lifelong heirloom.

The first Swatch collection launched in Zurich on March 1, 1983. The watches were colorful, lightweight, and intentionally playful. Instead of treating a watch as jewelry or precision machinery alone, Swatch treated it as something closer to clothing, something people could swap depending on mood or style. That idea changed the business.

Swatch helped pull the Swiss watch industry out of the so-called Quartz Crisis. The profits from the inexpensive plastic watches gave the larger group room to preserve and rebuild traditional Swiss brands including Omega, Longines, and Tissot. By the late 1990s, the company formally became the Swatch Group, one of the largest watch conglomerates in the world.

And what’s the connection to the ocean? The story goes that Hayek was on the beach and saw hundreds of young people playing in the water. He noticed that, despite an endless number of waterproof watches available, no one was wearing any. He decided to make Swatch colorful and waterproof in order to ensure that beachgoers could tell the time and, presumably, look cool. The first waterproof Swatch, the Scuba 200, is the definitive progenitor of the SCUBAQUA line.

This, then, brings us to the decidedly cool SCUBAQUA.

The Watch

These are Swatches to the core. The watches are bright, playful, slightly strange, and completely unconcerned with looking serious. Inspired by jellyfish and other undersea creatures and built around translucent cases and loud colors, the SCUBAQUA line brings back the spirit of the old Swatch Scuba watches from the 1990s while updating the formula with new materials and a larger, more modern case.

We tested the blue-green Medusae model with a candy colored green band — it literally looks edible — and a clear case that reminds me of an old Bondi Blue iMac from the late 1990s.

The case combines matte Bioceramic with transparent biosourced material derived from castor oil, creating what Swatch calls a “jelly effect.” The transparent dial exposes the quartz movement underneath, giving the watches a toy-like charm that somehow still works as proper dive-inspired gear. At 44mm wide, the watches are large, but the lightweight construction and silicone strap keep them comfortable on the wrist.

Every model takes its name and color palette from a different jellyfish species. The collection ranges from the stark black Black Sea Nettle to the glowing yellow Egg Yolk and the electric blue Blue Fire. Newer additions, including Medusae, Sea Wasp, Pacific Sea Nettle, and Flower Hat, push the color combinations even further into beach-watch territory.

The details are pure Swatch. The crown sits unusually at 10 o’clock, partly for comfort and partly because it looks cool. The hands and markers glow in the dark, water resistance is rated to 10 bar or 100 meters, and some models now include Swatch Pay for contactless payments. Basically, you’re getting something on par with a Seiko diver but for a mere $155, a great price for such a large and usable watch.

The watch even has a readable diving bezel that matches the watch’s playful style. Interestingly the movement, a standard watch ETA quartz, has a second position for what I suspect is a date wheel. Sadly, they didn’t add that to this model. Further, the movement is non hacking so you can’t synchronize your watches before taking tequila shots on the beach.

This is not a hard-core dive watch pretending to belong beside a Submariner or Fifty Fathoms. It’s a summer watch or a watch for someone who misses when Swatch was willing to be weird and colorful without turning everything into a limited-edition collaboration stunt. The SCUBAQUA collection succeeds because it remembers that watches can still be fun.

I’m not a quartz guy but this thing has won my heart. It’s a great addition to the Swatch canon and definitely worth the price of admission. I could see this as a teenager’s first watch or a tool watch for someone beating around a sailboat or hitting the depths snorkeling. The bottom line is if you don’t want to wear your Rolex or Omega to the beach, you can very easily slap this to your wrist, check the time, and enjoy your day knowing that your weird little Swatch will let you know when it’s time for lunch.

If you’re not familiar with the Bulova Lunar Pilot you’re probably not frequenting the affordable yet cool watch groups. Originally built around the same time as the Speedster, the Lunar Pilot has an interesting and often-overlooked back story.

During the Apollo 15 mission, commander David Scott wore a Bulova chronograph on the lunar surface after his is…

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I like throwback clothing. Not costume pieces, not Go Go boots or Nehru jackets. I mean gear that pulls from old workwear and military issue, things that were built for a job and still carry a little cool. The Fieldworth Type 45 Flight Jacket fits that mold. It looks like something you would dig out of a dusty Army Navy store, but it lands with cleaner …

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Nomadic is a Belfast-based brand and it tends to stay close to home. This release, the Apex NW200 Chronograph, makes that clear. The NW200 is tied to the North West 200, one of the fastest road races in the world, and now Nomadic sits at the center of it as official timing partner.

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The Zenith Chronomaster Revival A384 Tropical reaches back to a moment when chronographs demanded daily attention and looked great with a linen suit. Before the late 1960s, you wound them each morning. Then came the El Primero, one of the first automatic chronograph calibers, running fast at 36,000 vibrations per hour. The A384 was part of that first wa…

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Storz & Bickel sounds like a Swedish law firm, but they’re best known for making some of the best and most rugged vapes around. Their flagship, the Venty, is a $449 behemoth with huge batteries and a clever LCD readout. The $249 Veazy, on the other hand, is a lower-cost but not lower-quality solution for the discerning paper.

The Veazy sits in the middle of the Storz & Bickel lineup, and it feels designed for people who want the company’s engineering without the bulk or price of its flagship devices. It is smaller, lighter, and more direct in how it works. You load it, press the front button, and inhale. You can boost and super-boost the temperature by clicking the button twice after each increase in temperature.

Buy Now

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Ulysse Nardin is marking 25 years of the Freak with what it calls the [Super] Freak, a watch that pushes the concept to its limit. The brand frames it as the most complicated time-only watch ever made, which sounds like marketing language until you look at what is actually inside. This is still a watch that shows hours, minutes, and now seconds, but it …

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Mondaine has added a new seasonal color to its Numeri line, introducing the 42 mm model in what it calls BlueLake. The update does not change the underlying watch, but it shifts the tone of the piece. The Numeri has always leaned toward a structured, almost architectural design, and this version softens that slightly with a blue dial meant to reflect water.

The case remains 42 mm in 316L stainless steel, with a brushed top surface and polished sides. The defining feature is still the 12-sided fixed bezel, which gives the watch its identity. It is not a rotating dive bezel but a faceted frame with engraved numerals, more about form and legibility than function. That shape, paired with the blue dial, creates a contrast between rigid geometry and a more fluid color palette.

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Swatch has expanded its SCUBAQUA line with four new models that lean into the brand’s mix of color, material experimentation, and everyday utility. The new watches arrive in aqua green, midnight blue, fuchsia, and solar orange, bringing the total SCUBAQUA lineup to nine pieces. Two of the new models, the aqua green MEDUSEA PAY and the midnight blue SEA WASP PAY, add Swatch Pay contactless payments, a feature that continues to show up across the brand’s more casual lines.

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Bulova has put real details behind its Sail4th 250 release, and the result is a straightforward sport watch with a strong visual hook. The reference is 98B474. It ties into the July 2026 tall ship events around New York and New Jersey, organized by Sail4th 250, and marks the brand’s 150th year.

The case measures 41 mm and uses a white hybrid ceramic cons…

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Yesterday, we talked to you about the Reolink Home Hub, which is a great way to move storage of camera recordings off of the camera, but still giving you control over your data. It can handle a number of different cameras: I easily swapped my Argus 4 Pro over to it, and then I also added in the camera that we’re talking to you about today - the Reolin…

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These days, we have no shortage of options when it comes to setting up security cameras. Do you want to be wired or wireless? Do you want to hard-wire your cameras, or do you want them battery powered? What about video clip storage - do you want that on-camera, in the cloud, or somewhere else? For us, we like the idea of storage being local, so we r…

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We’ve been able to spend a lot of time with a variety of the headphones and earbuds from 1MORE, and their over-ear headphones have been coming with a very compelling balance of functionality and pricing. Their latest, the 1MORE SonoFlow Pro, give a solid upgrade to battery life, as well as including a handy wired accessory.

1MORE SonoFlow Pro: what they…

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I’ve made no secret here that I’m a fan of a watch that features a GMT complication (even if I’m not traveling much), as well as being a fan of Shinola. I mean, there’s a reason there’s a sticker on my laptop that says “Detroit vs. Everybody”. So you know when the news hit on the Shinola Monster Worldtimer GMT, I was very, very interested

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In some regards these new releases are going to look familiar, particularly if you’re familiar with the 41mm Navigator line (which comes in either date or no-date versions). However, with some new materials in the mix, these two new models should be among the lightest Navigators from the brand.

What’s new with these watches?

Here, it’s all about the mate…

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There are watches you notice, then there are watches you recognize. The difference is shape. Not the dial, not the movement, but the outline that hits your eye before anything else.

Reservoir has spent years building its name on instrument-style displays. The dial always did the talking. The rest of the watch was fairly standard. With the $7,500 Mark II, that balance changes.

A shift away from the dial-first idea

Reservoir Mark II is the first time the brand treats the entire watch as a holistic piece. Not just the display, but the case, the bracelet, the way it sits on the wrist.

Before this, Reservoir cases felt like frames. You looked through them at the dial. Now the case steps forward. It has weight, presence. You notice it before you read the time. Next, the company split the design language into three distinct targets.

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The $5,900 Bell & Ross BR-03 has been around long enough to feel settled. It is one of those designs that stopped trying to prove itself years ago. Square case, round dial, cockpit roots. You either get it or you do not. With the new BR-03 Skeleton Steel, the brand is not changing that formula. It is opening it up.

This model sits inside a broader push from the brand to make skeletonization part of the core line rather than a side experiment. The earlier ceramic versions leaned into contrast and depth. This one goes the other way. It strips things back and lets the movement carry the look.

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