Presidents Day Apple deals can be few and far between truthfully, Presidents Day has never been a boon for tech deals in general. But each year there are a few standout discounts, and this time one of them is on the iPad mini 7. You can grab it for $100 off right now, bringing it down to $499, which is close to its record-low price. Apples latest and greatest diminutive tablet easily found a place on our list of the best iPads. Its a solid refresh without any real tradeoffs when compared to the full-sized tablet. It supports the Apple Pencil Pro, the A17 Pro chip is plenty powerful and the overall design is comfortable to hold. Its an iPad mini. We called it a solid and necessary update to the best small tablet on the market in our official review. We came away impressed by the stereo speakers, which sound much better than one would expect. The display is nice, despite maxing out at a 60Hz refresh rate, and the camera array takes surprisingly decent shots, even in low light. Its great for everyday computing tasks and, of course, for playing mobile games like Balatro. This model doesnt include an M-series chip, though the A17 Pro is plenty powerful. Also, the battery life isnt going to be winning any awards. We struggled to squeeze ten hours of it. This model also lacks Face ID, which could be an issue for some users. Beyond these minor nitpicks, however, this is a near-perfect teensy tablet. Follow @EngadgetDeals on Twitter and subscribe to the Engadget Deals newsletter for the latest tech deals and buying advice.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/deals/presidents-day-apple-deals-include-the-ipad-mini-7-for-100-off-162536618.html?src=rss

The recipients of the US government's CHIPS and Science Act awards may not get the amount that they were initially promised. According to Reuters, the Trump administration is looking to assess and change the CHIPS Act's current requirements. After that, it's set to renegotiate some of the deals awarded by the Biden administration. It has also indicated a delay in some of the disbursements that are already scheduled, Reuters said. A spokesperson for Taiwan-based GlobalWafers said the company was notified by the program's office that CHIPS Act policies are under review because certain conditions do not align with Trump's executive orders. GlobalWafers is one of the program's awardees that was set to receive $406 million in grants.Former president Joe Biden signed the CHIPS Act into law in 2022 to boost semiconductor production in the US. While each awardee has different milestones they need to achieve in order to get grants, the goal is to get them to build new foundries and upgrade existing ones in the country. The Trump administration is reportedly concerned with many of the previous administration's requirements for recipients. They include clauses added into contracts by Biden's team, the news organization's sources said, including requirements to use unionized labor when building factories and to provide factory workers with affordable childcare. The White House also isn't happy that some of the companies, such as Intel, announced expansion plans in China after being chosen as a recipient.The US government has yet to formally announce any changes to CHIPS Act policies, so it's not yet clear how extensive they will be and how previous deals will be affected. Bloomberg reported last year that the Biden administration rushed to finalize deals with recipients after Donald Trump won the presidential elections. Trump vocally criticized the program in the past, calling it "bad" and arguing that increasing tariffs would attract chip companies without the government having to award any grants.This article originally appeared on Engadget at https://www.engadget.com/computing/trump-administration-reportedly-eyes-renegotiating-chips-act-awards-143035924.html?src=rss

Steam users who downloaded PirateFi are being warned to run a system check or fully reset their PC.

Surfshark found that four out of five of the most popular applications on the Apple App Store may track your personal info for profit. Here's all you need to know.

To create breathtaking visuals for T. Rowe Price, the Paris team of Rodeo FX worked with director Antoine Bardou-Jacquet. The concept, which includes a high-energy run across the city, a strange smoke wall, and elaborate zoetrope effects, effortlessly combines several realities.Precise motion design and compositing were needed for every element to guarantee smooth shot transitions. This dynamic concept was brought to life by Rodeo FX through the integration of creative visual approaches and painstaking craftsmanship, producing a polished and captivating experience that showcases their proficiency in compositing, digital environments, and high-end VFX.The post T. Rowe Price VFX Breakdown by Rodeo FX appeared first on Vfxexpress.

Wt FX used innovative VFX techniques and painstaking animation to bring Raka, the sage and resilient tutor, to life. Raka, the final survivor of Caesars order, is a notable character in Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes because of his remarkable emotional range.In order to ensure photorealism in every shot, Wt FX meticulously groomed and dressed Rakas fur with water, dust, and debris, using more than 560,000 renderable fur strands. Their efforts cemented the films status as a visual effects masterpiece by helping it win the 2025 VES Award for Outstanding Visual Effects in a Photoreal Feature.The post Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes Animating Raka the Orangutan by Wt FX appeared first on Vfxexpress.

On January 29, President Donald Trump celebrated the latest victory in unelected billionaire Elon Musks crusade against inefficiency in the government: stopping $50 million from, according to Trump, being sent to Gaza to buy condoms for Hamas. Fact-checkers diplomatically pointed out that no evidence exists for this claim, which, if it were true, would work out to 1.5 billion condoms for some 2.1 million Gazans. They also noted that for several years, the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), which provides food, medical care, and humanitarian aid abroad, had not sent any condoms anywhere in the Middle East.In a press conference on Tuesday, Musk appeared to concede that this might have been a mistake. (One theory: He got confused by the fact that the U.S. government funds disease prevention in Gaza Province, Mozambique.) But the condoms for Hamas story took on a life of its own on X, the social media platform Musk bought in 2022, where the outraged blue-check accounts that dominate feeds and replies treated it as incontrovertible proof of the righteousness of Musks mission. Tip of the iceberg, Musk wrote on January 28, quoting an account called Autism Capital, which had shared a clip of White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt making the condoms claim. As of this writing, the Autism Capital tweet has been viewed 54 million times; Musks retweet is not far behind, at 47 million.In the weeks since, Musk has been working diligently to dismantle USAID, which he has described as a criminal organization that needs to die. Under his direction, the agency was gutted by a rapid-fire series of furloughs, firings, and spending freezes intended to reduce staffing by roughly 95%. Some smaller organizations that received USAID funding were forced to fold immediately; other luckier ones are scrambling to figure out what they will do if they exhaust their cash reserves sometime in the next few months.A federal judge temporarily blocked parts of these orders from taking effect, but on Monday morning, staffers still found themselves locked out of their offices and were instructed to telework until further notice. In the meantime, USAID-funded soup kitchens in famine-stricken areas have already closed, and refugee hospitals are turning patients away; in Uganda, workers said that dozens of newborns were contracting HIV daily after funding for antiretroviral drugs disappeared. Even if some federal judge eventually rescues USAID from Musks clammy grasp, people will suffer and die because Trump turned the government over to a Big Tech reactionary who believes that money spent on poor people is money wasted.We spent the weekend feeding USAID into the wood chipper, Musk tweeted on the evening of Sunday, February 2. Could [have] gone to some great parties. Did that instead.Musks war on USAID is the fullest realization yet of his efforts to turn X into a Musk-inflected agitprop factory. By replacing the legacy Twitter verification system with one that makes algorithmic boosts freely available for purchase, Musk created an environment in which anyone with a paid account can turn their favorite conspiracy theory into a trending topic. When Musk, as he so often does, weighs in on a post that catches his attention, his cosign amplifies it to his more than 200 million followers, who read, digest, and repeat it to the point where it might work its way to the top of the trending-topics page again. It is an unprecedented level of being Too Online: Musk is both driven by news cycles on X and driving news cycles on X all by himself.Before the election, the byproduct of this dynamic was typically just an unfunny tweet with the cry-laughing emoji appended. Now, with Trump in the White House and apparently happy to serve out his term getting puppeteered by the worlds richest man, the stakes are considerably higher: If a stupid viral tweet about condoms sufficiently piques his interest, Musk has the power to ruin lives overnight.As the Washington Post reports, Musks obsession with USAID appears to originate from Mike Benz, a former Trump administration official who, prior to his stints in government, seems to have moonlit as a pseudonymous alt-right streamer warning of the looming dangers of white genocide. Benzs thesis, as outlined in a blizzard of color-coded tweets and hours-long videos that make the Pepe Silvia guy look like the paragon of rational thinking, is that USAID is a front group for American intelligence involved in mass censorship, leftist indoctrination, and/or clandestine anti-Trump machinations executed by shadowy figures at the highest levels of government.Most of Musks anti-USAID tweets in recent weeks, according to NBC News, are interactions with Benz and other blue-check X accounts pushing the same narrative. (Among them: a clip from Benzs December appearance on Joe Rogans podcast.) Musks triumphant wood chipper tweet, for example, quoted a tweet from Benz that called USAID the Terror Titanic, which in turn quoted a tweet from Milo Yiannopoulos that described USAID as the most gigantic global terror organization in history.There is a simple moral argument for one of the worlds wealthiest countries spending a fraction of its annual budget to fight starvation and epidemic and poverty abroad, especially when its annual military spendingthe same military that drops bombs on other countries whenever U.S. politicians deem that particular form of intervention more usefulis more than $800 billion, or roughly 20 times the $40 billion budget of USAID. But you do not have to buy this argument to understand how USAIDs work benefits the economy, or national security, or whatever else you might include in a term as nebulous as American interests. The reason Congress created and continues to fund USAID is to strategically build soft power and goodwill; that this often takes the form of providing badly needed (and relatively inexpensive) humanitarian aid is mostly a happy coincidence. When a country is still struggling to address, say, chronic food shortages or an antibiotic-resistant strain of tuberculosis, planning ambitious new ventures with U.S. businesses probably wont be at the tippy-top of its priority list.Musks purported interest in government efficiency has always been about accumulating power, and his decision to single out USAID is unsubtle even by his standards. He is implementing a farcically literal version of America First, eager to cut off people whose lives, in his opinion, are not worth the trouble of improving, let alone saving from preventable death.In some ways, the Musk-USAID odyssey follows a familiar pattern: conspiracy theories bubbling up from the murkiest depths of the right-wing media ecosystem, which tweaks, launders, and repackages stories to the point where theyre coherent enough for the opinion section of the Wall Street Journal, the front page of Drudge, and/or the A-block on Fox & Friends. During the first Trump administration, there was no better way to track the presidents official position on pretty much any issue of substance by reviewing whatever Steve Doocy and Ainsley Earhardt had spent the morning gabbing about.Eight years later, however, stories no longer need to appear in a Murdoch-owned media property to rocket to the top of the White House agenda. If you are a conservative activist who wants to influence the trajectory of American politicsor, for that matter, if you are a member of a foreign intelligence agency looking to do the samethe single smartest investment you can make is a monthly subscription for an X account that earns a coveted Wow! reply from Musk. Or, even better, Looking into this.The proliferation of fringe views on X aligns nicely with Musks policy preferences. But it is also good for the long-term viability of the X platform, which Musk frames as a tool for citizen journalists to report on stories that the traditional news media fails to cover accurately, thoroughly, or both. Musk often exhorts X users to remember they are the media nowand of the four X accounts NBC News identifies as peddling anti-USAID content boosted by Musk, one promises unfiltered breaking news, and another claims to be a citizen journalist. Omitted from Musks rhetoric is the simple fact that X does not subject content to a meaningful vetting process; in practice, citizenship journalism is a euphemism for empowering anyone to label anything as news and trust the algorithm to make it so, no matter how disconnected from reality it may be.When Musk calls X the future of journalism, he isnt saying he wants people on X to report on the shuttering of USAID or the deaths of the people it serves. He wants people on X to drown out the journalists who report these things. For people steeped in the closed, pay-to-play universe hes built, whatever is happening on X is the story. If it isnt happening on X, is it even happening in the first place?Nobodys going to bat a thousand, Musk said in his White House press conference after a reporter asked about the condom falsehood. We will make mistakes, but well act quickly to correct any mistakes. Shortly thereafter, he tweeted a clip of himself speaking at the press conference, along with the caption, $50M of condoms is a LOT of condoms. It has 59 million views and counting.

The Daytona 500 is one of the more challenging races on the NASCAR circuit. The speedway is long and narrow, forcing drivers to be more aggressive. And the weather in central Florida doesnt always cooperate. During the 2024 event, a deluge of rain had forced a Monday conclusion. After 41 lead changes and with only eight laps to go, a crash involving half the field prompted a red flag and a 15-minute delay. At the end, another collision between leader Ross Chastain and Austin Cindric opened the door for William Byron to zip by and take the checkered flag.Byrons win wasnt a huge surprisehed notched 10 prior wins on the NASCAR circuitbut his backstory is unusual. Hes part of a new emerging generation of drivers who have learned much of the craft of high-speed racing online through iRacing, the premier esport for virtual, or sim, racing, where anyone can channel their inner Joey Logano and race in the glitziest virtual races in the world. Now 27, Byron became a NASCAR fan at the age of 6 when his father took him to a race in Virginia. A few years later, Byron heard an interview with Dale Earnhardt Jr. gushing about sim racing and thats what got me interested, he says. I felt like I could learn something.William Byron, driver of the #24 Axalta Chevrolet, celebrates in the victory lane after winning the NASCAR Cup Series Daytona 500 at the Daytona International Speedway on February 19, 2024 in Daytona Beach, Florida. [Photo: Getty Images for NASCAR]iRacing at 12Equipped with the necessary steering wheel, pedal, and a working PC, Byron began sim racing at age 12. He learned how to navigate tight turns, calculate angles, temper speedall without the worry of real-life crashing. Its realistic enough to get started and see if youre good at it, he says. Its really similar to pickup basketball. A chance for people to compete in a way they probably wouldnt have the opportunity to any other way. After a year and a half, Byron began to enter local go-kart races. Eighteen months after that, he was racing legend cars, launching his career.Chelmsford, Massachusettsbased iRacing, cofounded by Boston Red Sox owner John Henry and motorsports simulator (and sometime racecar driver) Dave Kaemmer in 2008, is the biggest name in sim racing, with 150 employees and consistent double-digit annual growth. This past November, iRacing began collaborating with Microsoft to integrate AI technologies into its simulators.In partnership with the Tiffany of racing brands, NASCARa deal that dates to the year of iRacings debutiRacing is changing the face of the sport: how up-and-coming drivers like Byron learn to drive, how cars are designed, how courses themselves are built, modified, and selected.[Photo: iRacing]Simulating excellenceSimulators have altered the landscape of athletics, especially in more finely skilled competitions such as baseball and golf. But virtual racing may be having the biggest impact. iRacings brand partnerships, not only with NASCAR but also some of the sports most storied racetracks and automakers, have allowed the company to re-create a real-world race experience down to the hubcaps. NASCAR and iRacing are also using the technology to figure out where (and even if) its feasible to build new tracks, or how to best modify existing ones, an arrangement that has led directly to races on the short track inside the L.A. Coliseum and the streets of downtown Chicago.I think the iRacing partnership was a little bit ahead of its time, says Tim Clark, NASCARs executive vice president and chief brand officer. If you go back to the beginning, we probably didnt really know what to make of it. Was it a game? Entertainment? A training tool? And the answer is it was a little bit of all those things. Its so unique, because you could influence a NASCAR fan of tomorrow, you could influence a NASCAR driver of tomorrow. I make this joke all the time. The Dallas Cowboys arent looking for their next quarterback on Madden, but you can scout the next driver of a NASCAR national series on iRacing.Chicago Street Course [Photo: iRacing]NASCAR 25Its like the experience of driving that race car in competition at any racetrack in the world, and gets you as close to reality without having to leave your home, adds iRacing executive director Dale Earnhardt Jr., a 2021 NASCAR Hall of Fame inductee. The tracks are scanned to perfection. Every bump, crack, crevice in a unique character about that racetrack is included. Bonus: if you crash, no one ends up in a hospital.iRacing currently boasts more than 1.2 million unique accounts and more than 300,000 active members. Now comes its next chapter: the launch this fall of NASCAR 25, an attempt to Madden-ize iRacings offerings and take sim racing from niche obsession to mass market behemoth. Its the companys very first console title. Up until now, iRacers had to pony up for a steering wheel and pedal set (which can run as high as $600), in addition to having to race solely on a PC. Entering the console spacea landscape dominated by competitors like EA, Sony Interactive, and NintendoiRacing is betting that NASCAR 25 can deliver the verisimilitude of its online races via a console on a big screen TV, at a more consumer-friendly price point. While an annual membership in iRacing costs around $100, with additional fees if you want access to fancier cars and tracks, NASCAR 25 will allow drivers to start their engines on their trusty Xbox or PlayStation at a to-be-determined price point that should be similar to existing sports games. (Madden NFL 25 retails for $69.99.)We want to make a NASCAR stock car drive like a real NASCAR stock car, says Steve Myers, the executive vice president of iRacing. Theres a reason only 40 guys in the world get to do itbecause its hard.[Photo: iRacing]From PC to consoleiRacings biggest asset has been the realism of its racing experience. Diehard fans now wonder if the console version can match the original. Making the jump from the PC ecosystem to consoles is a big step, opening the door for more players to experience iRacings level of realism, says Alberto Segovia, an amateur driver and prolific blogger on sim racing. What intrigues me the most is how theyll manage to balance that authenticity with the accessibility of a console game. But if anyone can pull it off, its iRacing.For NASCAR, Clark says, the game represents an effort to create fans on their terms. I think in years past, we may have taken a more selfish view of fandom, that you have to watch on TV or you have to buy a ticket and come to a racetrack. But if youre fandom is getting on iRacing and participating in some of these races that way, Im totally fine with that.[Photo: iRacing]A league of its own?Therein lies other potential marketing gold to be mined, in the form of a televised TGL Golftype virtual racing league (NASCAR dipped a toe in during the COVID lockdowns), or even a celebrity-laden, Cannonball Runstyle special, with stars sliding into virtual race cars, ready to rev up. A lot will depend on just how much mass appeal NASCAR 25 can muster.I want every fan of motorsport to be able to experience the anxiety of trying to qualify for race, the nerves and the butterflies of sitting on a starting grid before the engines fire, being in that nose-to-nose battle on the final lap, having to make that exact right decision in the right moment to win the race, Earnhardt says. Thats what they get to experience in iRacing. Theres no candy-coating, theres no handholding. Thats the draw.Byron, who still sim races offseason to get the rust knocked off, is excited for the launch, and hell be right there at the starting line. He still sim races under his own name. Does he win all the time?He laughs. Usually.

Large language models (LLMs) process extensive datasets to generate coherent outputs, focusing on refining chain-of-thought (CoT) reasoning. This methodology enables models to break down intricate problems into sequential steps, closely emulating human-like logical reasoning. Generating structured reasoning responses has been a major challenge, often requiring extensive computational resources and large-scale datasets to achieve optimal performance. Recent efforts aim to enhance the efficiency of LLMs, ensuring they require less data while maintaining high reasoning accuracy.One of the primary difficulties in improving LLM reasoning is training them to generate long CoT responses with structured self-reflection, validation, and backtracking. While existing models have demonstrated progress, the training process often demands expensive fine-tuning on extensive datasets. Furthermore, most proprietary models keep their methodologies closed-source, preventing wider accessibility. The need for data-efficient training techniques that preserve reasoning capabilities has grown, pushing researchers to explore new methods that optimize performance without overwhelming computational costs. Understanding how LLMs can effectively acquire structured reasoning with fewer training samples is critical for future advancements.Traditional approaches to improving LLM reasoning rely on fully supervised fine-tuning (SFT) and parameter-efficient techniques like Low-Rank Adaptation (LoRA). These techniques help models refine their reasoning processes without requiring comprehensive retraining on vast datasets. Several models, including OpenAIs o1-preview and DeepSeek R1, have made strides in logical consistency but still require significant training data.A research team from UC Berkeley introduced a novel training approach designed to enhance LLM reasoning with minimal data. Instead of relying on millions of training samples, they implemented a fine-tuning method that uses only 17,000 CoT examples. The team applied their method to the Qwen2.5-32B-Instruct model, leveraging both SFT and LoRA fine-tuning to achieve substantial performance improvements. Their approach emphasizes optimizing the structural integrity of reasoning steps rather than the content itself. By refining logical consistency and minimizing unnecessary computational overhead, they successfully trained LLMs to reason more effectively while using significantly fewer data samples. The teams approach also improves cost efficiency, making it accessible for a broader range of applications without requiring proprietary datasets.The research demonstrates that the structure of CoT plays a crucial role in enhancing LLM reasoning performance. Experiments revealed that altering the logical structure of training data significantly impacted model accuracy, whereas modifying individual reasoning steps had minimal effect. The team conducted controlled trials where they randomly shuffled, deleted, or inserted reasoning steps to observe their influence on performance. Results indicated that disrupting the logical sequence of CoT significantly degraded accuracy while preserving its structure and maintaining optimal reasoning capabilities. LoRA fine-tuning allowed the model to update fewer than 5% of its parameters, offering an efficient alternative to full fine-tuning while maintaining competitive performance.Performance evaluations showcased remarkable improvements in reasoning capabilities. The Qwen2.5-32B-Instruct model trained with 17,000 CoT samples achieved a 56.7% accuracy rate on AIME 2024, marking a 40.0% improvement. The model also scored 57.0% on LiveCodeBench, reflecting an 8.1% increase. On Math-500, it attained 90.8%, a 6.0% rise from previous benchmarks. Similarly, it achieved 85.0% on AMC 2023 (+17.5%) and 60.3% on OlympiadBench (+12.7%). These results demonstrate that efficient fine-tuning techniques can enable LLMs to achieve competitive results comparable to proprietary models like OpenAIs o1-preview, which scored 44.6% on AIME 2024 and 59.1% on LiveCodeBench. The findings reinforce that structured reasoning training allows models to enhance performance without excessive data requirements.The study highlights a significant breakthrough in improving LLM reasoning efficiency. By shifting the focus from large-scale data reliance to structural integrity, the researchers have developed a training methodology that ensures strong logical coherence with minimal computational resources. The approach reduces the dependence on extensive datasets while maintaining robust reasoning capabilities, making LLMs more accessible and scalable. The insights gained from this research pave the way for optimizing future models, demonstrating that structured fine-tuning strategies can effectively enhance LLM reasoning without compromising efficiency. This development marks a step forward in making sophisticated AI reasoning models more practical for widespread use.Check outthePaper and GitHub Page.All credit for this research goes to the researchers of this project. Also,feel free to follow us onTwitterand dont forget to join our75k+ ML SubReddit. NikhilNikhil is an intern consultant at Marktechpost. He is pursuing an integrated dual degree in Materials at the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur. Nikhil is an AI/ML enthusiast who is always researching applications in fields like biomaterials and biomedical science. With a strong background in Material Science, he is exploring new advancements and creating opportunities to contribute.Nikhilhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/nikhil0980/Meta AI Introduces PARTNR: A Research Framework Supporting Seamless Human-Robot Collaboration in Multi-Agent TasksNikhilhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/nikhil0980/This AI Paper Introduces CodeSteer: Symbolic-Augmented Language Models via Code/Text GuidanceNikhilhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/nikhil0980/NuminaMath 1.5: Second Iteration of NuminaMath Advancing AI-Powered Mathematical Problem Solving with Enhanced Competition-Level Datasets, Verified Metadata, and Improved Reasoning CapabilitiesNikhilhttps://www.marktechpost.com/author/nikhil0980/This AI Paper Explores Long Chain-of-Thought Reasoning: Enhancing Large Language Models with Reinforcement Learning and Supervised Fine-Tuning [Recommended] Join Our Telegram Channel

Gaming chairs have a lot of bad stereotypes youll hear theyre uncomfortable, theyre poorly made, theyre more concerned with good looks than good ergonomics. While these dont apply to every chair (and certainly not the best gaming chairs we've reviewed), the Duelhawk Ultra 2 checks far too many of those negative boxes to be a good recommendation. Its high asking price and uncomfortable design makes this a gaming chair best avoided.Duelhawk Ultra 2 Design and FeaturesThe Duelhawk Ultra 2 is the successor to the original Ultra which was released in 2022 for around $450, which was positively reviewed overall and, for all intents and purposes, was a pretty standard racing-style gaming chair. On the surface, the Ultra 2 looks pretty similar and trades the all-PU leather or all-fabric design for a mix of materials. The back and seat are a bit flatter, and it has lumbar and neck pillows but doesnt have the elastic straps to keep it in place.Zoomed out, it looks like a fresh version of the Ultra, which is what you would expectuntil you see that Duelhawk has tripled the price and is asking for $1,300, seemingly marked down from $2,199. Wait, what? That makes the Duelhawk Ultra 2 one of the most expensive gaming chairs you can buy, positioning it alongside Steelcase and Herman-Miller thats quite a change from the original.Let me be clear here: I dont have anything against expensive computer chairs. They have their place, but as I looked closer at the Ultra 2 on paper and gave it a close once-over in photos, I struggled to see what was different enough to justify tripling the price of the original.Now that its here and Ive spent a week testing it, I can say for sure: its ridiculously overpriced. There are positive qualities about it such as the high-quality materials and top-notch choice in fabrics, which Duelhawk boasts. The PU leather is soft and breathable, and the fabric on its seat and back is stylish and pillowy (though it captures pet hairs almost immediately). The mechanical and structural bits are also quite good. It uses an aluminum wheelbase and oversized casters for easy movement. The tilt base is clearly heavy-duty, as is the gas piston that controls height. The armrests have this nice mirrored plating thats almost identical to Secretlab, and I really like the look, even if the pads on top are too stiff to lean your elbows on for very long.Looking for a chair worth its price?Our Top PickSecretlab Titan Evo NanogenWith a brand new, ultra comfy leatherette and softer seat cushion, the new Titan Evo Nanogen is the gaming chair to buy.Be sure to check out our roundup of the best gaming chairs!I also like that the seat and back are both wide and can accommodate different sitting styles, like crossing one or both legs underneath you. It's also well-suited for people of different sizes, from 53 to 63 height and up to 300 pounds in weight.The Ultra 2 tries to distinguish itself with its advanced ergonomics. There are certainly ergonomic elements to it with the memory foam lumbar and neck pillows that are adjustable using its unique rail system, also trimmed in a nice and soft fabric. The backrest also bolts into the tilt base with a thick steel leaf, so anytime you lean back, the lumbar support stays in the right position.This does mean that there isnt any traditional recline, however. Since the backrest is attached to the base instead of independent arms like most other bucket-style gaming chairs, you cant simply pull a lever and lean back into a deeper horizontal position. Rather, you can lean back into a deep rock but the seat tilts with you. You can adjust the tension of its movement using a knob on the bottom or lock it into an upright position using a lever on the bottom. One of the most interesting features of the chair is that aforementioned rail system, centered in the backrest to adjust the lumbar and neck pillows. A cartridge fastens to the back of each pillow which is threaded through the gap and clamped in place. When you need to make an adjustment, you lift up the bottom of the pillow to unlock it from the rail and move it up or down along metal notches. This system also allows air to travel through for improved breathability. The chair is light on other adjustments you can adjust seat height using a lever on the bottom and the armrests, which offer the usual height, angle, depth, and rotation adjustments, but thats it.Duelhawk Ultra 2 AssemblyAssembling the Ultra 2 isn't complicated, but still manages to be annoying. If you've ever built a gaming chair before, most of the steps will be identical. It comes completely disassembled, which means you need to attach the arms, tilt base, casters, gas piston, and wheelbase, and the backrest then needs to be attached to the seat. This process doesnt stray too far from the usual basics.The differences come with attaching the backrest to the seat and the cushions to the backrest. To be clear, I've built many chairs that have a similar attachment system for the backrest. However, the Ultra 2 is so inexact in its design that it is difficult to do by yourself. There's a slot in the tilt base where the backrest lead fits in, but the problem is that the slot is so wide that it doesn't actually hold the leaf in place and it can easily pop out. Duelhawk Ultra 2 - AssemblyImagine the awkwardness of trying to balance a heavy seat and a long heavy backrest, holding it perfectly in place while also trying to thread a bolt through and fasten it with the included hex wrench. After ten minutes, I just flipped the entire backrest upside down and let gravity help hold it in place because normal assembly tactics were just not working with the given directions. If you have someone to help you, it won't be too bad, but trying to do this by yourself is just obnoxious.Attaching the pillows is simple enough, but be sure not to mix up the cartridges between the lumbar and neck. They are bagged separately and I would suggest leaving them that way so they don't get mixed up in the process. There seem to be subtle differences that are hard to make out by eye, but if you do mix them up like I must have, the headrest will rattle with an obnoxious metal-on-metal sound any time its moved. You'll also want to make sure that you leave the headrest fairly loose so it's easier to adjust.Duelhawk Ultra 2 PerformanceWith the chair built, I was excited to sit in it and enjoy all of the added comfort the proclaimed meticulously engineered and advanced ergonomics would bring. To its credit, the seat cushion is soft, the fabric is pleasant to the touch, the pillows are soft, and you can reliably get them to stay in place after adjusting. The chair feels solid and durable and Im not worried about it breaking anytime soon.Unfortunately, that's about where my positive sentiments end. The first thing I noticed when leaning back in it for the first time is that I could feel the hard mounting plate of the cartridge through both pillows and especially in the lumbar. The pillows are made of memory foam, but it's not thick enough to hide the hard edges underneath and completely undermines whatever comfort they might otherwise provide.While more lightweight users may not face this issue, Im by no means a heavier person, coming in at 175 pounds and yet, I could feel it in my back plain as day. The discomfort wasnt as prevalent in the neck pillow, but I was still able to feel it. The rail system is smart in concept, but its poorly executed. Essentially, the back has a steel ladder embedded in it and the pillows hook into notches to stay in place. It works, but its loud, and feels clunky, literally. The headrest is also hard to adjust, even with the screws on the cartridge loosened to the point that I worry theyll come out over time. It routinely got stuck in place in such a way that I had to use my shoulder to apply more force or physically stand up to adjust it.Thankfully, the lumbar is much easier to move, which is a consolation considering that youre stuck with this system without any kind of additional lumbar support. You dont have much of a choice given the chairs plain backrest is flat and uncomfortable. The best solution I found was to remove the cartridge, but then have the pillows only held in place by your body weight. I kept the neck pillow mounted since the hard edges werent as prominent and took to just readjusting the lumbar whenever I sat forward.The armrests offer enough adjustability to feel supportive whether you're typing on a keyboard or playing a game with a controller. They do feel outdated, however. I've been very pleased to see the gaming chair industry move towards softer materials for the armrests, and while these are not made of a hard plastic, they're firm enough to make my elbows sore if I leaned on them for more than a couple of minutes at a time.At this price point, its impossible to ignore its limitations... This is a gaming chair that is best avoided.The recline system also leaves more to be desired as the product page feels a bit disingenuous. It claims up to 175 degrees of recline, but because this works in conjunction with the seat, which admittedly is more ergonomic, it's just not practical to lean back that far for any length of time. Your knees wind up pointing toward the ceiling and, frankly, it makes you feel like youre going to fall backward.Increasing the tension of the tilt is also a necessity. My sample came very loose, so the first time I sat in it, I actually almost fell backward. Tightening it down is a chore since it's harder than necessary to turn the knob sufficiently to get enough tension. There's definite room for refinement here.So, what you're left with is a chair that is very similar in appearance to an average gaming chair that would be hundreds of dollars cheaper (if not, over a $1,000 less), and still be less comfortable and missing features.Purchasing GuideThe Duelhawk Ultra 2 is available to ship with the next batch units, which you can order directly from the Duelhawk store. It requires a $200 reservation to place an order, but goes into paying the full price.