Enthrone

There's a temporary Amazon Echo price drop today, right before Amazon Prime Day, if you don't mind buying a certified refurbished smart speaker.

It costs just $89.99 until the end of Saturday in the US and free one-day shipping with the required (for the deal) Amazon Prime subscription.

Normally, a brand new Amazon Echo costs $179.99, and a refurbished version is usually priced at $134.99, so you're saving $75 today.

Is this cheap Amazon Echo any good?

This Amazon Echo deal comes in two colors: black and white and has all of the usual features you'd want from a smart speaker.

So the burning question is: Why is it so much cheaper? Besides the fact that the retailer is promoting Amazon Prime Day, these items are usually lightly used.

By lightly used, we mean this Amazon Echo box was likely opened and returned by someone before 30 days. Amazon has a fairly liberal return policy.

Is also required the Amazon Prime subscriber to obtain the Echo, which is a clever way for Amazon to get more members right before Prime Day on Tuesday.

• Get the Amazon Echo deal before midnight

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Grow is a lovely indie platform game with a gameplay mechanic reminiscent of Alice in Wonderland.

 The game's protagonist is a crow wearing a rather natty knitted sweater, who must venture across a wintry landscape to safety. He faces various challenges along the way, which can be overcome by eating either mushrooms to apples.

Mushrooms make him grow, making high ledges and hills accessible, while apples make him shrink small enough to pass through tiny hidden doorways. Scoffing multiple apples or mushrooms magnifies the effect.

It's worth downloading for the charming artwork alone, so give it a try.

Download here: Grow

Download of the Day is our pick of the best free software around – whether it's useful, fun, or just plain silly. If you have any recommendations, please send them to downloads@techradar.com.

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With a press event scheduled for July 25, we're expecting to see some shiny new Motorola phones before the month is out, though we'll forgive you if you're starting to lose track of all the handsets that this Lenovo-owned manufacturer has in the pipeline.

Some fresh details about the Moto G5S Plus have hit the web – that's the premium upgrade on the cheap Moto G5 Plus we saw earlier this year, if you're confused – and it sounds as though the design and camera are going to be the big upgrades.

Inside the phone will have the same Snapdragon 625 CPU, 4GB RAM and 64GB of storage combination as its predecessor, reports the well-informed Evan Blass at VentureBeat, so in terms of processing power and speed it's very much as you were.

Happy snappers

What is new is the anodized aluminum enclosure to add a more premium feel to the chassis, and a dual-lens camera at the rear, featuring two 13-megapixel sensors – one black and white, one color. The G5 Plus just has one 12-megapixel sensor, so the new model should be capable of some extra photo trickery.

An upgrade that's probably going to be worth it for the photo enthusiasts then, and meanwhile the screen gets stretched to 5.5 inches rather than 5.2 inches. The 1080p resolution remains the same as the Moto G5 Plus and indeed the Moto G5.

Will that be enough to tempt you into a purchase? A lot is going to depend on the price, but on paper it sounds like a decent phone. The Moto G5S Plus may well get unveiled on the 25th with the Moto Z2 and the Moto X4 (also slated to come with dual-lens cameras), so watch this space.

• If you're after a budget phone this year, we've got plenty to pick from

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If the closest you’ve ever got to looking after a pet is keeping a goldfish, it’s hard to imagine what looking after a horse would be like – other than very expensive, of course. 

It's so expensive – it'll cost you up to $10,000/£10,000 a year to keep a horse stabled – that spending an extra few hundred on a equine wearable seems like nothing. Sure enough, there’s a whole mini market of horse wearables hiding behind the Fitbits and Garmins and French company Arioneo produces horse wearables for both regular horse owners and pro riders. 

Orscana is a disc-shaped wearable that monitors things like movement, body temperature and moisture levels, and lets you know what sort of rug your animal should be wearing – even horses need jumpers sometimes. 

We doubt whether many horse racers are reading this, but Arioneo also makes a GPS and heart rate-sensing tracker called Equimetre, the horsie equivalent of a Garmin Fenix 5 runner’s watch. It records the speed, stride and even rhythm of races/rides, storing the data in a Runkeeper-like interface.

There are plenty of pet trackers out there that alert you when your dog or cat is moving around, and cameras that let you check in on them. Pawscam is a bit different, though – it's like a GoPro for your dog.

The Pawscam hangs from your dog’s collar, and automatically starts capturing video when it thinks something interesting is going on. It’s driven by AI, but let’s be honest, it’s not going to be close to sentience. 

“Standing up, rolling, chasing, jumping, licking, or barking” are what set Pawscam rolling, and it snaps six-second videos at a time, primed for social media. With great power comes great responsibility, though, eh? Don’t be a Pawscam pest. 

You can also remotely hook into the camera to see what your pet is up to whenever you like.

Here’s one that will have a few dog owners up in arms. The Garmin Delta Smart is a training collar – but it's the way in which it administers said training that has made many vet and animal welfare groups unhappy. 

The Delta Smart contains a bark sensor that monitors the vibration of the dog’s throat. And if they dare to bark at the postman again, you can have the band administer a mild electric shock. 

If you prefer the soft touch, the Delta Smart can also be set to emit a tone or vibrate instead, which we’d like to think Cesar Milan would prefer. 

There’s a remote to let you, er, 'train' your dog from up to 10 meters away, and once you’ve taught them to stop being an almighty pain with buzzes, bleeps or shocks, the Delta Smart will also function as an activity tracker.

Most human fitness wearables go on our wrists, but that’s not going to cut it for the grand medical device future some have in mind, with gadgets on or in our bodies monitoring all aspects of our health, all the time.

The Vital Herd tracker shows the way forward, although it might make you feel a bit uncomfortable. It’s an e-pill tracker that's added to a cow’s feed, ending up in their stomach where it wirelessly transmits readings for the rest of the animal's life. 

From there it can monitor heart rate, core temperature, breathing rate, and what’s going on with the acid in the cow’s stomach. This enables herd managers to spot health problems in animals, and gauge when they’re in heat.

Imagine if there was a real-life equivalent of the swipe right/left gesture in Tinder. Finding a partner might be a much simpler, if rather more brutal experience. 

Cows may not have evolved to online dating just yet, but it’s apparently dead easy to find out when a female is in heay. They start trotting around like crazy, engaging in up to six times their usual activity. 

The Fujitsu Estrus Detection System for Cattle, or EDSC for short, is a bit like one of those ankle bracelets they use to keep tabs on offenders; it attaches to a cow's leg, and measures their step activity. When the cow starts darting around like crazy, the farmer is alerted to the fact that they’re ready to get busy. That’s true romance.

The GoPro Fetch Dog is simply a GoPro action camera harness for doggies, opening up the possibility of Instagram stardom, sponsorship deals and everyone insisting you’re an 'influencer', whatever that means.

It’s a study, washable harness that lets you put your GoPro camera either on the dog’s back or under its front for a dog’s eye view of your adventures together. It's also cheap way to capture action footage for indie movies with even lower budgets than Roger Corman’s. 

One of the coolest-sounding pet wearables of the past few years was No More Woof, a brain scanner that claimed to read your pooch’s mind. Like so many crowd-funded projects with this kind of sci-fi premise, it ended up vapourware of the highest order. 

Inpupathy seems like a much more realistic alternative, because while it still aims to relay your dog’s mood, it doesn’t use any brain-scanning tech. Instead, it’s basically a heart rate chest strap for dogs with an LED light show on the top. 

The wearable then looks at your dog’s heart rate pattern and translates it into one of the well-recognized four doggie emotions: happy, calm, concentrate and excitement. That’s by no means the full spectrum of dog emotions – they left out  hangry for one – but they are at least states that can be assessed via heart rate. 

Excitement makes the Inupathy turn red, a calm relaxed dog glows blue, concentration causes white flashes and happiness sets of a rainbow LED light pattern – and makes you feel like a master dog-raiser.

Sound the dodgy tech alarm, this one is ripe. Brown banana ripe. The Anicall Shiraseru Am is a cat tracking gadget from Japan that claims to be able to monitor your cat’s (or dog’s) emotions without any particularly advanced sensors. 

There’s an accelerometer and a temperature sensor, that’s it. And how does it work? Artificial intelligence, that old chesnut. 

We all know cats’ emotions are 90% various shades of hate and disdain, but isn’t that a bit ambitious? The Anicall Shiraseru Am is claimed to be able to distinguish 20 kinds of emotion/behaviour. 

The device started off its life on a Japanese crowdfunding website, Makuake. Strange-sounding crowdfunded projects always raise an eyebrow, but t he Shiraseru Am also popped up being demo’d at the 2016 Wearable Device Expo in Tokyo. Maybe it’s not totally made up after all.

This is one of the most conventional animal wearables in this list. Wonderwoof is a fitness tracker for dogs, with no crazy promises or claims. 

However, it wins a place here because it’s shaped like a bow tie. And it comes in a whole bunch of colours. WonderWoof is proper doggy tech accessorisation. 

Under the cute exterior it’s basically a canine Fitbit, though. There’s an accelerometer to monitor activity and the battery lasts for up to seven days between charges.  

GPS doesn’t feature but the WonderWoof only costs as much as some human activity trackers anyway. 

Look at this bee tracker and you have to wonder whether it’s a) an April fool or b) something from a Peta cruelty advert. It’s actually part of an important science experiment, though. 

In 2015, a company called Tumbling Dive designed a tiny little wearable tracker for bees in association with the University of Newcastle, and it was trialled at London’s Kew Gardens. But how do you make a wearable for an animal that weighs just a fraction of a gramme?

It uses a tiny RFID transmitter and a mini aerial coil that, this one might be hard to swallow, are superglued to the bee. Sorry, bees. 

However, it’s all in the aid of finding more about the behaviour of bees, and why their numbers are dwindling, letting researchers see when a bee returns to the hive. We tried to get in contact with the team to find out more about the project’s progress since 2015 but haven’t been able to chat to them yet. 

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Using a full-scale VPN service has multiple benefits: Wi-Fi connections are encrypted, a new IP address hides your identity, and you may be able to access sites you can't normally reach.

There are downsides, too. A VPN typically slows down your internet connection, might conflict with some applications, and can sometimes be expensive.

VPN and proxy browser extensions are a simpler, more lightweight alternative to a full VPN client. They're not as secure and they only protect your browser traffic, but you can get some of the same benefits – an encrypted connection, plus a site unblocking new IP – and they're an easy way to explore what each service has to offer.

Tunnello is a good example of what's available. The extension is user-friendly, offers 13 locations around the world, and says it’s ‘10x faster’ than the competition. The speed claims don’t match our experience (although it is quick), it only works on Chrome, and the free plan limits you to 200MB of data per day, but if your needs are simple that could be enough.

Below we've listed 10 of the best VPN browser extensions for Chrome and Firefox. They won't all work for everyone – it depends on where you are and what you're trying to do – but they all have some level of free access so it's easy to test them out for yourself.

• The best VPN services of 2017

TunnelBear is a likeable Canadian VPN offering great performance, a strong focus on simplicity, and a website filled with cartoon bears.

Install the Chrome extension, register with your email address and you're ready to go. Click the TunnelBear address icon at any time, choose your location from the 20 available (Europe, US, India, Hong Kong, Mexico, and more), and the browser updates instantly to use your new home.

Unusually, you can toggle the service on and off instantly with a hotkey (Ctrl+Shift+U); there’s no need to touch your mouse at all.

The biggest issue with TunnelBear's standard free plan is the 500MB per month data limit, which you could easily use up in a quick browsing session. This can be increased by tweeting about the service, which earns you an extra 1GB. Upgrading to the commercial version gets you unlimited data for a reasonable $5 (£4) a month paid annually, and there are often special deals available. Speaking of which, there’s an exclusive TechRadar deal available here which gives you 5GB of data.

Whether you're using the free or commercial plans, you'll have access to the same seriously speedy network. In our performance testing, UK to UK connections gave us 35Mbps or better download speeds, the US server managed 30 to 35Mbps, and even going long-distance to Australia still got us 10Mbps; that's way better than most of the competition.

• Get the TunnelBear Chrome extension here

Free browser-based VPN extensions are often disappointing, but Windscribe is refreshingly different: it has fewer limits, more features, and on balance is a quality service you might actually want to use.

One major convenience is the fact that you don't need to sign up – just choosing a username gets you 2GB of data allowance a month for free. Handing over an email address gets you an impressive 10GB a month, though, way better than some of the competition.

Windscribe's Cruise Control chooses the fastest server for you, and automatically changes it when you hit a blocked resource. You might bypass some geoblocks without ever knowing they were there. 

Of course you can choose your own location, too. Options include US Central, US East, US West, Canada East, Canada West, France, Germany, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Hong Kong and the UK.

Whatever you're using, you get the same fast performance as the commercial plans. In our tests that meant 30Mbps and higher download speeds from our local UK server, 25-30Mbps from Europe, and 15-20Mbps when connecting to our nearest US server.

Smart bonus features can remove ads, trackers and social media buttons, or randomly rotate your user agent to help stop sites recognising you. If any of these cause problems on a favourite site, add it to Windscribe's whitelist and normal service will be resumed. Nifty.

Signing up for the Pro plan gets you unlimited bandwidth and access to the full 45 locations. It's a little more expensive than most at $7.50 (£6) a month paid annually, but there are loads of apps and you can install it on as many devices as you need – another uncommon bonus there.

• Get the Windscribe Chrome extension here, and Firefox add-on here

One of the best-known names in the VPN business, Hotspot Shield is an easy-to-use service with apps for almost everything (yes, even Windows Mobile).

The Chrome and Firefox extensions can be downloaded and used for free. There's no need to hand over your email address or any other kind of personal information, which is obviously a welcome privacy plus.

Using this VPN really couldn't be any easier. Clicking a big button connects you to the best server for your location, and you can start browsing right away. Click the button again to disconnect. Who needs a manual?

You can switch to another location in a couple of clicks. US and UK servers aren't included with the free plan, but you do get access to Canada, Chile, the Czech Republic, France, Germany, India, Netherlands, Russian Federation, Singapore, Spain, Sweden and Turkey. 

The free version gives you 750MB of data per day, but performance is variable. We got up to 30Mbps at best, but usually it was a lot less, with most sites taking noticeably longer to load.

Still, Hotspot Shield's registration-free simplicity and range of locations is appealing, and overall it's well worth a try. If you'd like to upgrade, Hotspot Shield's Elite plan drops the ads, gets you more locations, coverage for multiple devices, unlimited data and cloud-based malware protection. Prices start at £6 ($7.50) a month, and at the time of writing you can get lifetime usage for £120 ($150). The latter could work out to be a great deal in the end.

• Get the Hotspot Shield Chrome extension here, and Firefox add-on here

ZenMate is a hugely popular VPN service based in Germany which now claims to have more than 41 million users.

The company's Chrome and Firefox browser extensions give you basic access to the VPN for free. You must sign up with your email address to get started, and also bear in mind that the service may include ads and there are only four locations (Germany, Romania, US, Hong Kong). But there are no annoying data transfer limits, and you're able to use the service as much and as often as you like.

ZenMate's browser extensions are straightforward and user-friendly. Select locations from a list and you're connected almost immediately, toggle the service on or off when you need it, and ZenMate's address bar icon updates to show when you're connected.

Speeds were reasonable on our test Windows 10 system. The German server gave us up to 20Mbps, we got 10-12Mbps from the US, and even Hong Kong's 3-5Mbps was just about enough for basic browsing.

Opting for the full commercial VPN gets you much-improved performance, more than 30 locations and the ability to use the service with other applications. Extras include malware and tracker blocking, and it's reasonably priced from £4.16 ($5.20) a month paid annually.

• Get the ZenMate Chrome extension here, and Firefox add-on here

DotVPN is a free, feature-packed VPN which claims it can ‘unblock the entire internet’. That's not quite true, but it does have some interesting tools you won't find everywhere else.

The core VPN is easy-to-use. Click a button to connect, click it again to disconnect, and that's about it. Unusually, the free version doesn't allow choosing your own location. Instead, DotVPN assigns you the fastest server, then changes it automatically.

There are several extras. You get a simple firewall, along with ad, tracker and analytics blocking – there’s even a ‘bandwidth saver’ which the company says can save up to 30% of your data traffic with integrated compression.

Will these tools be effective? That depends on your internet use, but DotVPN does its best to help you find out. Open the extension at any time and it displays the number of ads, trackers, analytics and network attacks blocked in the last seven days.

DotVPN worked well most of the time, but a few sites wouldn't display correctly when it was running. That's not a fatal problem – there might not be any issues with your favourite sites, and disabling a tracker or two might help – but be ready for some initial troubleshooting.

If DotVPN delivers for you, the full Premium account gets you a full VPN and usage on up to five devices from $3 (£2.40) a month, paid annually.

• Get the DotVPN Chrome extension here, and Firefox add-on here

Also consider…

6. Strong Proxy

Simple to set up and use, Strong Proxy enables connecting to 14 locations, including seven across the US. Bandwidth is limited to 3GB a month, but speeds are good, and unlike many free competitors, the company won't collect and resell your data to third-parties.

• Get the Strong Proxy Chrome extension here

7. SetupVPN

SetupVPN offers a ‘lifetime free’ plan with unlimited bandwidth, and access to 18 locations across the world: Europe, US, South America, South Africa, Japan, India and more. Speeds can be good over short distances, but tail off quickly and can be very inconsistent (our UK-US speeds ranged from 5-20Mbps).

• Get the SetupVPN Chrome extension here, and Firefox add-on here

8. Gom VPN

Gom VPN is all about unblocking restricted websites in the simplest way possible. It's incredibly easy-to-use, with no settings or even locations to select: just a single on/off button. The price isn't bad at $4 (£3.20) a month, paid annually, but you can get some full-scale VPNs for less.

• Get the Gom VPN Chrome extension here

9. Hola

Hola is a very different type of VPN which passes traffic through its users, rather than a network of servers. It works, and it's entirely free for non-commercial use, with no bandwidth limits. But Hola has some privacy issues, too, and overall we'd only recommend it for casual use.

• Get the Hola Chrome extension here, and Firefox add-on here

10. Hoxx VPN Proxy

Hoxx is a very user-friendly free service with above-average performance and more than 20 locations spread all around the world. It's popular and highly-rated on both Chrome and Firefox, but be sure to check the privacy policy: the company can collect and use a lot of personal information.

• Get the Hoxx VPN Proxy Chrome extension here, and Firefox add-on here

Also check out our other VPN content:

• Best VPN for China
• Best VPN for Mac
• Best VPN for torrenting
• Best VPN for Android
• Best VPN for Windows
• Best VPN for Netflix
• Best VPN for Canada
• Best VPN for Kodi
• Best VPN for business
• Best VPN for Australia
• Best VPN for iPhone/iOS
• Best VPN for Chrome
• Best VPN for India
• Best VPN for gaming

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It’s hard to believe that first Amazon Kindle was announced a decade ago in 2007, but here we are 10 years later and the e-tailer’s fledgling e-ink device has since seen three spin offs. With four different Kindles on the market – including the regular Kindle, Paperwhite, Voyage and Oasis – it can be hard to pick the right one for you when they all vary in price and features.

Luckily, we’ve compared all the current models to work out the differences and help you find the right one.

Kindle

The Kindle is your standard, entry level model. Despite being at the bottom rung of the Amazon’s e-reader hierarchy it has a 6-inch touchscreen boasting a 167 ppi resolution that displays decently sharp test. That said, the Kindle lacks a few features seen on its higher-end cousins including a built-in light for reading in the dark.

Kindle Paperwhite

The Kindle Paperwhite is a big step up from Amazon’s vanilla e-reader and arguably our favorite. First off, it features a newer e-ink technology named Carta that claims to offer a 50% increase in contrast and smoother page turns. 

On top of this, the Paperwhite’s display is nearly twice as sharp as the standard Kindle – which Amazon updated in 2015 to match up with the Voyage and Oasis. It also offers a built-in lighting system, which consists of four LEDs that create a diffused illumination across the entire screen. Unlike an LCD screen you would find on an iPad or laptop, you to read for hours without the straining your eyes.

Kindle Voyage

Although the Kindle Voyage has a lot in common with the Paperwhite, it’s slimmer, lighter and has a screen that gets rid of the plastic bezels for a flush glass panel. Its biggest differentiator however is a set of haptic touch controls on the side that you can press to turn pages back and forth. This e-reader also features an evener lighting system with six LEDs and an adaptive light sensor that automatically sets the screen brightness.

Kindle Oasis

The Oasis is the most book-like e-reader out of the Kindle family and thus has the boxiest proportions. Despite its square shape, Amazon claims the Oasis is 30% thinner on average and 20% lighter than any of its other e-readers. All the while it has all the features of the Voyage and a few more.

The Oasis is the only Kindle that still features physical buttons for turning pages and while they might look like they’re right-handed biased, left-handed users can just flip the reader over for the same experience. You'll also see the longest battery life on the Oasis but only if you keep the included cover attached.

• Find the finest deals for Amazon Prime Day

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Microsoft has made some major strides in education between Windows 10 S and its latest Surface Laptop, and now the company is kicking off its back to school sale.

A few notable items include a specially priced $899 Surface Pro 4 with a black type cover – one of the very few ways of getting Microsoft’s flagship tablet bundled with its essential keyboard. And in case you’re not a student, you can get the same package for $999.

Alternatively, the Surface Book sees an $150 discount that drops the price of the base model with an Intel Core i5 processor, 8GB of RAM and 128GB SSD to $1,349.

Sadly, the latest Surface Pro or Surface Laptop isn’t included in this back to school sale, but the latter can be picked up with an $100 discount if you’re a student. Purchasing any Surface device during this sale comes with a free three-month trial of Groove’s streaming music service.

Users can pick up Intel’s $429 Software Starter Pack, which includes seven creativity-center programs, when purchasing an Dell XPS 15, Dell XPS 13, HP Spectre x360, and Lenovo Yoga 910. Although, there isn’t a free Xbox One like last year, Microsoft is selling Xbox One S bundles with a $20 discount. 

• Get in on the best laptop deals for this month

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While your favorite jams make a long commute or road trip that much sweeter, it goes without saying that driving while searching through your digital albums is also dangerous.

To help reduce that distraction, Spotify is reportedly testing out a driving mode for the mobile app version of its music streaming service, according to users on Reddit.

Spotify's supposed 'Auto Mode' appears to rely on voice commands to find your top tunes, and replaces the standard controls with oversized buttons for skipping through tracks while keeping your eyes on the road.

While this theoretically safer to use behind the wheel, some Reddit users claiming to have gotten their hands on Auto Mode say the limitations of the interface actually increase distractions, since it's not as easy to navigate as the standard UI.

Spotify has yet to confirm the feature, making it possible that it was intended for employees to test out but instead made it out to some members of the public by accident.

When asked about Auto Mode, a Spotify representative told TechRadar that it's frequently testing out new products, but has "no news to share" at this time.

• How to listen to non-streaming artists using Spotify

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