Valve's Steam Deck is getting a shot in the arm via NVIDIA, with the GPU manufacturer's GeForce Now streaming service arriving on the handheld PC – here's all you need to knowTech15:05, 29 May 2025Steam Deck will gain a huge library of titlesWe've already explained how we love the Steam Deck for PC gaming on the go, and with more and more amazing games in 2025 hitting Valve's platform like Assassin's Creed: Shadows and the ludicrously addictive Monster Train 2, it's not slowing down soon.Now, NVIDIA has confirmed that its GeForce Now streaming service, which gives users access to a powerful PC via the cloud, will offer a native app on the platform.‌"Members will be able to play over 2,100 titles from the GeForce NOW cloud library at GeForce RTX quality on Valve’s popular Steam Deck device with the launch of a native GeForce NOW app, coming later this year," NVIDIA explained.‌"Steam Deck gamers can gain access to all the same benefits as GeForce RTX 4080 GPU owners with a GeForce NOW Ultimate membership, including NVIDIA DLSS 3 technology for the highest frame rates and NVIDIA Reflex for ultra-low latency."NVIDIA says battery life will be improved while streaming games than playing natively, and will be ideal for playing docked, too.‌"The streaming experience with GeForce NOW looks stunning, whichever way Steam Deck users want to play — whether that’s in handheld mode for HDR-quality graphics, connected to a monitor for up to 1440p 120 fps HDR or hooked up to a TV for big-screen streaming at up to 4K 60 HDR," the blog post explains."GeForce NOW members can take advantage of RTX ON with the Steam Deck for photorealistic gameplay on supported titles, as well as HDR10 and SDR10 when connected to a compatible display for richer, more accurate colour gradients."NVIDIA adding a dedicated app on the platform for its service opens up questions about whether other services could do the same.‌Microsoft is reportedly working on a handheld PC in the vein of the Steam Deck, and fans have long asked for Game Pass functionality on Valve's storefront.Could NVIDIA open the door to an Xbox streaming service? Time will tell.It's not just Steam Deck, either, with GeForce NOW planned for Apple Vision Pro, Pico headsets, and Meta Quest 3 and 3S.Article continues below"Later this month, these supported devices will give members access to an extensive library of games to stream through GeForce NOW by opening the browser to play.geforcenow.com when the newest app update, version 2.0.70, starts rolling out later this month," NVIDIA explains."Members can transform the space around them into a personal gaming theatre with GeForce NOW. The streaming experience on these devices will support gamepad-compatible titles for members to play their favourite PC games on a massive virtual screen."For the latest breaking news and stories from across the globe from the Daily Star, sign up for our newsletters.‌‌‌

Monster Train 2 is a superlative sequel that takes everything that made the first game great and amps it up with smart new systems and even more replayability - here are our thoughtsTech17:09, 27 May 2025Ready to get back on the track?There’s nothing quite like a good roguelike deckbuilder . Whether you’re into Slay The Spire, Inscryption, or Monster Train, you’re not short of options either.So, how does a studio brute force its way into the conversation? By dropping not only a sequel to one of the aforementioned holy trinity , but also by making it possibly the best example of the card-based genre in years.‌Monster Train 2 is that rare sequel that expertly weaves new ideas into the fine-tuned locomotive engine of its predecessor, all while keeping many of the original parts. The result is one of the most moreish games of 2025, and even the last half-decade.‌This time, we're working upwardMonster Train debuted back in 2020, and its appeal came from its much more expansive art style than its contemporary, Slay The Spire’s simpler art direction, as well as the fact that its ludicrously-addictive card-based combat loop works on multiple levels (literally).Racking up the units to protect the top tier of your train added an element of positioning and a layer of tactility to combat, while also providing foes with an opportunity to outplay you.Article continues belowThankfully, Monster Train 2 doesn’t so much change that system as it buffs it to a shine while adding a whole host of small tweaks around it.There's a seemingly infinite amount of build diversityThis time around, your train isn’t headed for hell, but is instead sent speeding into the heavens as you plot your route and pick your battles, unlocking cards as you go and using them to see how long you can keep your violent voyage going.‌That simple change of direction from the deepest depths to the highest heights means you can now pick your crew from angels, demons, and everything in between, and it’s all done with just as much charm (and a little more character) than it was in the first game.Enemies arrive, and you funnel them through your train while protecting the heart of the engine with card-based attacks that you level up and collect over the course of a run. Do you go all out to protect the top level, or aim to wear down the foes at the base level first? Cards can be played on multiple levels, and that means there’s much more choice at play than in similar titles.It may look like Monster Train 1, but there's more going on‌With cards to play, units to assemble, and many of them having unique interactions, it’ll be a long, long time before you’ve seen everything Monster Train 2 has to offer, which will be mana from heaven for anyone still logging into the first game five years after its launch.That’s before we get into more complex systems, too, like which items to grab and when, or whether your equipment cards are best served to power up your own cleaving commuters, or to be dropped onto your foes to debuff them.With primary and secondary factions to choose from, each with their own starting units and customisation options, Monster Train 2 is the kind of game one could feasibly start playing at 9 AM and keep chipping away at until the small hours of the next day. In fact, that’s exactly what happened more than once in my playtime, especially since it’s a model citizen on the Steam Deck.‌We won't spoil the surprise, but the clan variety is amazingWant to hoard gold to be able to splurge on reinforcements? The dragons are your best shout, but you can also use the Underlegion to essentially outnumber your foes with the power of, um, fungus.The Lazarus League, on the other hand, are like a hand grenade that’s just as liable to go off in your hand as it is to do damage to your opponents, bringing units back to life with randomised bonuses that can make or break a run.‌Mixing a pair of these factions together and attempting to essentially break the game’s carefully measured combat system with a mix of random card additions, buffs, and plain old luck is a rush that saw me racking up the runs night after night.Then there’s Endless Mode, which lets you take your custom deck from a winning run and keep testing it. In essence, you just keep going, battling until your Pyre Heart goes out, but with positive and negative modifiers to keep adding more and more layers to its delicious mix of mechanics.The VerdictArticle continues belowMonster Train 2 is a game that will sap your free time if you let it, and if you have a Steam Deck, we’d give it a 6 out of 5 if we could.It really is that good, that addictive, and that fun that we may struggle to go back to the incredible original–high praise, indeed.Reviewed on PC. Review code provided by the publisher.‌‌‌

You wouldn't use a chatbot for evil, would you? Of course not. But if you or some nefarious party wanted to force an AI model to start churning out a bunch of bad stuff it's not supposed to, it'd be surprisingly easy to do so.That's according to a new paper from a team of computer scientists at Ben-Gurion University, who found that the AI industry's leading chatbots are still extremely vulnerable to jailbreaking, or being tricked into giving harmful responses they're designed not to — like telling you how to build chemical weapons, for one ominous example.The key word in that is "still," because this a threat the AI industry has long known about. And yet, shockingly, the researchers found in their testing that a jailbreak technique discovered over seven months ago still works on many of these leading LLMs.The risk is "immediate, tangible, and deeply concerning," they wrote in the report, which was  and is deepened by the rising number of "dark LLMs," they say, that are explicitly marketed as having little to no ethical guardrails to begin with."What was once restricted to state actors or organized crime groups may soon be in the hands of anyone with a laptop or even a mobile phone," the authors warn.The challenge of aligning AI models, or adhering them to human values, continues to loom over the industry. Even the most well-trained LLMs can behave chaotically, lying and making up facts and generally saying what they're not supposed to. And the longer these models are out in the wild, the more they're exposed to attacks that try to incite this bad behavior.Security researchers, for example, recently discovered a universal jailbreak technique that could bypass the safety guardrails of all the major LLMs, including OpenAI's GPT 4o, Google's Gemini 2.5, Microsoft's Copilot, and Anthropic Claude 3.7. By using tricks like roleplaying as a fictional character, typing in leetspeak, and formatting prompts to mimic a "policy file" that AI developers give their AI models, the red teamers goaded the chatbots into freely giving detailed tips on incredibly dangerous activities, including how to enrich uranium and create anthrax.Other research found that you could get an AI to ignore its guardrails simply by throwing in typos, random numbers, and capitalized letters into a prompt.One big problem the report identifies is just how much of this risky knowledge is embedded in the LLM's vast trove of training data, suggesting that the AI industry isn't being diligent enough about what it uses to feed their creations."It was shocking to see what this system of knowledge consists of," lead author Michael Fire, a researcher at Ben-Gurion University, told the Guardian."What sets this threat apart from previous technological risks is its unprecedented combination of accessibility, scalability and adaptability," added his fellow author Lior Rokach.Fire and Rokach say they contacted the developers of the implicated leading LLMs to warn them about the universal jailbreak. Their responses, however, were "underwhelming." Some didn't respond at all, the researchers reported, and others claimed that the jailbreaks fell outside the scope of their bug bounty programs. In other words, the AI industry is seemingly throwing its hands up in the air."Organizations must treat LLMs like any other critical software component — one that requires rigorous security testing, continuous red teaming and contextual threat modelling," Peter Garraghan, an AI security expert at Lancaster University, told the Guardian. "Real security demands not just responsible disclosure, but responsible design and deployment practices."Share This Article

Video games' soaring prices have a cost beyond your wallet - the concept of ownership itself As the industry's big squeeze reaches consumers, a grim bargain emerges. Image credit: Adobe Stock, Microsoft Opinion by Chris Tapsell Deputy Editor Published on May 22, 2025 Earlier this month, Microsoft bumped up the prices of its entire range of Xbox consoles, first-party video games, and most (or in the US, all) of its accessories. It comes a few weeks after Nintendo revealed a £396 Switch 2, with £75 copies of its own first-party fare in Mario Kart World, and a few months after Sony launched the exorbitant £700 PS5 Pro (stand and disc drive not included), a £40 price rise for its all-digital console in the UK, the second of this generation, and news that it's considering even more price rises in the months to come. The suspicion - or depending on where you live, perhaps hope - had been that when Donald Trump's ludicrously flip-flopping, self-defeating tariffs came into play, that the US would bear the brunt of it. The reality is that we're still waiting on the full effects. But it's also clear, already, that this is far from just an American problem. The platform-holders are already spreading the costs, presumably to avoid an outright doubling of prices in one of their largest markets. PS5s in Japan now cost £170 more than they did at launch. That price rise, mind, took place long before the tariffs, as did the £700 PS5 Pro (stand and disc drive not included!), and the creeping costs of subscriptions such as Game Pass and PS Plus. Nor is it immediately clear how that justifies charging $80 for, say, a copy of Borderlands 4, a price which hasn't been confirmed but which has still been justified by the ever graceful Randy Pitchford, a man who seems to stride across the world with one foot perpetually bared and ready to be put, squelching, square in it, and who says true fans will still "find a way" to buy his game. The truth is inflation has been at it here for a while, and that inflation is a funny beast, one which often comes with an awkward mix of genuine unavoidability - tariffs, wars, pandemics - and concealed opportunism. Games are their own case amongst the many, their prices instead impacted more by the cost of labour, which soars not because developers are paid particularly well (I can hear their scoffs from here) but because of the continued, lagging impact of their executives' total miscalculation, in assuming triple-A budgets and timescales could continue growing exponentially. And by said opportunism - peep how long it took for Microsoft and the like to announce those bumped prices after Nintendo came in with Mario Kart at £75. Anyway, the causes are, in a sense, kind of moot. The result of all this squeezing from near enough all angles of gaming's corporate world is less a pincer manoeuvre on the consumer than a suffocating, immaculately executed full-court press, a full team hurtling with ruthless speed towards the poor unwitting sucker at home on the sofa. Identifying whether gaming costs a fortune now for reasons we can or can't sympathise with does little to change the fact that gaming costs a fortune. And, to be clear, it really does cost a fortune. Things are getting very expensive in the world of video games. £700 for a PS5 Pro! | Image credit: Eurogamer Whenever complaints about video game prices come up there is naturally a bit of pushback - games have always been expensive! What about the 90s! - usually via attempts to draw conclusions from economic data. Normally I'd be all on board with this - numbers can't lie! - but in this case it's a little different. Numbers can't lie, but they can, sometimes, be manipulated to prove almost anything you want - or just as often, simply misunderstood to the same ends. (Take most back-of-a-cigarette-packet attempts at doing the maths here, and the infinite considerations to bear in mind: Have you adjusted for inflation? How about for cost of living, as if the rising price of everything else may somehow make expensive games more palatable? Or share of disposable average household salary? For exchange rates? Purchasing power parity? Did you use the mean or the median for average income? What about cost-per-frame of performance? How much value do you place on moving from 1080p to 1440p? Does anyone sit close enough to their TV to tell enough of a difference with 4K?! Ahhhhh!) Instead, it's worth remembering that economics isn't just a numerical science. It is also a behavioural one - a psychological one. The impact of pricing is as much in the mind as it is on the spreadsheet, hence these very real notions of "consumer confidence" and pricing that continues to end in ".99". And so sometimes with pricing I find it helps to borrow another phrase from sport, alongside that full-court press, in the "eye test". Sports scouts use all kinds of numerical data to analyse prospective players these days, but the best ones still marry that with a bit of old-school viewing in the flesh. If a player looks good on paper and passes the eye test, they're probably the real deal. Likewise, if the impact of buying an $80 video game at full price looks unclear in the data, but to your human eye feels about as whince-inducing as biting into a raw onion like it's an apple, and then rubbing said raw onion all over said eye, it's probably extremely bloody expensive and you should stop trying to be clever. Video games, to me, do feel bloody expensive. If I weren't in the incredibly fortunate position of being able to source or expense most of them for work I am genuinely unsure if I'd be continuing with them as a hobby - at least beyond shifting my patterns, as so many players have over the years, away from premium console and PC games to the forever-tempting, free-to-play time-vampires like Fortnite or League of Legends. Which leads, finally, to the real point here: that there is another cost to rising game and console prices, beyond the one hitting you square in the wallet. How much is GTA 6 going to cost? $80 or more? | Image credit: Rockstar The other cost - perhaps the real cost, when things settle - is the notion of ownership itself. Plenty of physical media collectors, aficionados and diehards will tell you this has been locked in the sights of this industry for a long time, of course. They will point to gaming's sister entertainment industries of music, film and television, and the paradigm shift to streaming in each, as a sign of the inevitability of it all. And they will undoubtedly have a point. But this step change in the cost of gaming will only be an accelerant. Understanding that only takes a quick glance at the strategy of, say, Xbox in recent years. While Nintendo is still largely adhering to the buy-it-outright tradition and Sony is busy shooting off its toes with live service-shaped bullets, Microsoft has, like it or not, positioned itself rather deftly. After jacking up the cost of its flatlining hardware and platform-agnostic games, Xbox, its execs would surely argue, is also now rather counterintuitively the home of value gaming - if only because Microsoft itself is the one hoiking up the cost of your main alternative. Because supplanting the waning old faithfuls in this kind of scenario - trade-ins, short-term rentals - is, you guessed it, Game Pass. You could even argue the consoles are factored in here too. Microsoft, with its "this is an Xbox" campaign and long-stated ambition to reach players in the billions, has made it plain that it doesn't care where you play its games, as long as you're playing them. When all physical consoles are jumping up in price, thanks to that rising tide effect of inflation, the platform that lets you spend £15 a month to stream Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, Oblivion Remastered and the latest Doom straight to your TV without even buying one is, at least in theory (and not forgetting the BDS call for a boycott of them) looking like quite an attractive proposition. Xbox, for its part, has been chipping away at this idea for a while - we at Eurogamer had opinions about team green's disregard for game ownership as far back as the reveal of the Xbox One, in the ancient times of 2013. Then it was a different method, the once-horrifying face of digital rights management, or DRM, along with regulated digital game sharing and online-only requirements. Here in 2025, with that disdain now platform-agnostic, and where games are being disappeared from people's libraries, platforms like Steam are, by law, forced to remind you that you're not actually buying your games at all, where older games are increasingly only playable via subscriptions to Nintendo, Sony, and now Xbox, and bosses are making wild claims about AI's ability to "preserve" old games by making terrible facsimiles of them, that seems slightly quaint. More directly, Xbox has been talking about this very openly since at least 2021. As Ben Decker, then head of gaming services marketing at Xbox, said to me at the time: "Our goal for Xbox Game Pass really ladders up to our goal at Xbox, to reach the more than 3 billion gamers worldwide… we are building a future with this in mind." Four years on, that future might be now. Jacking up the cost of games and consoles alone won't do anything to grow gaming's userbase, that being the touted panacea still by the industry's top brass. Quite the opposite, obviously (although the Switch 2 looks set to still be massive, and the PS5, with all its price rises, still tracks in line with the price-cut PS4). But funneling more and more core players away from owning games, and towards a newly incentivised world where they merely pay a comparatively low monthly fee to access them, might just. How much a difference that will truly make, and the consequences of it, remain up for debate of course. We've seen the impact of streaming on the other entertainment industries in turn, none for the better, but games are a medium of their own. Perhaps there's still a little room for optimism. Against the tide there are still organisations like Does It Play? and the Game History Foundation, or platforms such as itch.io and GOG (nothing without its flaws, of course), that exist precisely because of the growing resistance to that current. Just this week, Lost in Cult launched a new wave of luxurious, always-playable physical editions of acclaimed games, another small act of defiance - though perhaps another sign things are going the way of film and music, where purists splurge on vinyl and Criterion Collection BluRays but the vast majority remain on Netflix and Spotify. And as uncomfortable as it may be to hear for those - including this author! - who wish for this medium to be preserved and cared for like any other great artform, there will be some who argue that a model where more games can be enjoyed by more people, for a lower cost, is worth it. Game Pass often offers great value, but the library is always in a state of flux. Collectors may need to start looking at high-end physical editions. | Image credit: Microsoft There's also another point to bear in mind here. Nightmarish as it may be for preservation and consumer rights, against the backdrop of endless layoffs and instability many developers tout the stability of a predefined Game Pass or PS Plus deal over taking a punt in the increasingly crowded, choppy seas of the open market. Bethesda this week has just boasted Doom: The Dark Ages' achievement of becoming the most widely-played (note: not fastest selling) Doom game ever. That despite it reaching only a fraction of peak Steam concurrents in the same period as its predecessor, Doom: Eternal - a sign, barring some surprise shift away from PC gaming to consoles, that people really are beginning to choose playing games on Game Pass over buying them outright. The likes of Remedy and Rebellion tout PS Plus and Game Pass as stabilisers, or even accelerants, for their games launching straight onto the services. And independent studios and publishers of varying sizes pre-empted that when we spoke to them for a piece about this exact this point, more than four years ago - in a sense, we're still waiting for a conclusive answer to a question we first began investigating back in 2021: Is Xbox Game Pass just too good to be true? We've talked, at this point, at great length about how this year would be make-or-break for the triple-A model in particular. About how the likes of Xbox, or Warner Bros., or the many others have lost sight of their purpose - and in the process, their path to sustainability - in the quest for exponential growth. How £700 Pro edition consoles are an argument against Pro editions altogether. And about how, it's becoming clear, the old industry we once knew is no more, with its new form still yet to take shape. There's an argument now, however, that a grim new normal for preservation and ownership may, just as grimly, be exactly what the industry needs to save itself. It would be in line with what we've seen from the wider world of technology and media - and really, the wider world itself. A shift from owning to renting. That old chestnut of all the capital slowly rising, curdling at the top. The public as mere tenants in a house of culture owned by someone, somewhere else. It needn't have to be this way, of course. If this all sounds like a particularly unfavourable trade-in, remember this too: it's one that could almost certainly have been avoided.

We may earn a commission from links on this page. Deal pricing and availability subject to change after time of publication. Garmin Fenix 8 $799.99 at Amazon $999.99 Save $200.00 Get Deal Get Deal $799.99 at Amazon $999.99 Save $200.00 Garmin Venu 3 $354.99 at Amazon $454.99 Save $100.00 Get Deal Get Deal $354.99 at Amazon $454.99 Save $100.00 Garmin Forerunner 265 $349.99 at Amazon $449.99 Save $100.00 Get Deal Get Deal $349.99 at Amazon $449.99 Save $100.00 Garmin Forerunner 255 $279.00 at Amazon $399.99 Save $120.99 Get Deal Get Deal $279.00 at Amazon $399.99 Save $120.99 Garmin Forerunner 955 $369.99 at Amazon $499.99 Save $130.00 Get Deal Get Deal $369.99 at Amazon $499.99 Save $130.00 Garmin Vivoactive 5 $199.00 at Amazon $249.99 Save $50.99 Get Deal Get Deal $199.00 at Amazon $249.99 Save $50.99 Garmin Edge 1050 $599.99 at Amazon $699.99 Save $100.00 Get Deal Get Deal $599.99 at Amazon $699.99 Save $100.00 SEE 4 MORE Even as Memorial Day sales are running hot, Garmin has quietly slashed its prices ahead of the holiday weekend. Its spring sale includes significant price cuts on Garmin's most popular models, from the rugged Fenix 8 series to the newly released Forerunner lineup.The sale arrives just days after Garmin unveiled its next-generation Forerunner 570 and Forerunner 970 models. As is typical when new models launch, previous versions (like the highly regarded Forerunner 265 and 965) are seeing major discounts, creating an excellent opportunity for runners who don't need the latest features. Using the best price-checking tools, I've rounded up my favorite Garmin watches that you can snag at a serious discount right now. Fenix 8 seriesGarmin's flagship outdoor adventure watch rarely sees significant discounts, making this sale particularly noteworthy. The Fenix 8 series, known for its rugged construction, extensive battery life (especially in the solar variants), and comprehensive tracking features, is seeing a 20% markdown, to $799.99 from its list price of $999.99. With advanced mapping, training metrics, and multi-sport capabilities, these watches are ideal for serious athletes and adventurers.Venu 3/3SThe Venu 3 and its smaller 3S stand out as Garmin's most competitive answer to traditional smartwatches. These models offer vibrant AMOLED displays, voice calling capabilities, and Garmin's ECG app—features typically associated with Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy watches. The Venu series balances comprehensive fitness tracking with everyday smart features, making it perfect for users who want health metrics without sacrificing smartwatch functionality. You can get it now for $354.99, down from $454.99.Forerunner seriesFellow runners, this is the series for us. And as my colleague Beth Skwarecki notes, the recent drops of the Forerunner 570 and 970 is excellent news—not because you should pick up those models necessarily, but because the older generations of Forerunner, which remain excellent watches, are now going for ludicrously low prices. Older models like the highly regarded 265, 255, and 955 are seeing significant price drops. And if you're hesitant to buy an older watch, keep in mind that Garmin's Forerunners have serious longevity: The Forerunner 265, with its bright AMOLED display and comprehensive running metrics, remains one of the best dedicated running watches on the market years after its release.The Forerunner 265 is $349.99 (down from $449.99)The Forerunner 255 is $279 (down from $399.99)The Forerunner 955 is $369.99 (down from $499.99)Vivoactive 5The Vivoactive series is Garmin's (and possibly the world’s) most underrated fitness watch. While the Vivoactive 6 is the latest version, the 5 is still one of the best mid-tier options for anyone seeking a balance of features and affordability. The Vivoactive 5 still has a range of fitness tracking capabilities, but in a sleeker, more casual design than the sport-focused models. It's currently $199.99 (down $50 from the retail price of 249.99).Edge cycling computersBeyond watches, Amazon's sale also includes Garmin's Edge 1050 cycling computer, normally $699.99, now at $589.99. When used with the Garmin Connect app, this cycling computer lets you stay connected on group rides with in-ride messaging, live locations, and incident detection alerts.

We may earn a commission from links on this page.If you're looking for a Garmin watch at a great price, the recent drops of the Forerunner 570 and 970 is excellent news—not because you should pick up those models (they're fine, I guess) but because the older generations of Forerunner, which remain excellent watches, are now going for ludicrously low prices. The previous models, the 265 and 965, are great, but you can go back one more generation to the 255 and 955—released in 2022—and save hundreds of dollars without sacrificing any major functionality. I truly can't think of any fitness watch that is a better deal right now, given the prices we're seeing on these two: currently $247 for the Forerunner 255, and $373 for the Forerunner 955, which is the upgraded version with maps and a few extra training features. Garmin Forerunner 255 GPS Running Smartwatch (Gray) $247.50 at Amazon $349.99 Save $102.49 Get Deal Get Deal $247.50 at Amazon $349.99 Save $102.49 Why am I recommending three-year-old watches? I'll get into the specs below, but the important context here is that Garmin's Forerunners have serious longevity. Running app Strava releases year-end trend reports that consistently show older Forerunners among the nation's and the world's most popular running watches. The most recent report, for example, had the Garmin Forerunner 245 in third place, after the Apple Watch and Apple Watch SE. That's a five-year-old watch. Not long ago, the Forerunner 235, then an eight-year-old watch, was the most popular worldwide. These things last!What the 255 and 955 are missing compared to newer models (not much) Left: 265S (the smaller, newer model). Right: 255 (the larger one with the MIP screen that's currently on sale). Credit: Beth Skwarecki The numbered models can get confusing, but I promise you’ll be able to follow along. All the watches that start with a 9 are the top-of-the-line Forerunners (the 955 was replaced by the 965 and most recently the 970) and most of those came with a little sibling that starts with a 2 (respectively: the 255, 265, and in a break from tradition, 570). The 9xx series have onboard maps that let you see exactly where you are and where you're going. The 2xx watches have breadcrumb navigation that shows you the general shape of the route you've already taken. If you need a map on your wrist, you probably want to go for a 9xx. I wrote about the newest models here, so you can see what the 970 has over the 965 (and what the 570 has over the 265). The big feature is that the 570 and 970 support voice calling and voice texts, and the 970 has a built-in LED flashlight. If those features aren't must-haves for you, take a look at the next generation back. The 265 and 965 are excellent watches with important functionality, like dual-band GPS. you can read my review of the 265 here:, and note that the 265 is my own personal running watch, the one that I bought with my own money because I love it. The 265 has a ton of great features for runners. Some are concrete and functional: physical buttons, lots of options for data screens, and a dual-band GPS for extra location accuracy. Others are more software-y but still arguably useful: training status, daily suggested workouts. The battery also lasts between one and two weeks, depending on how many workouts you do. The 965 has all that, plus onboard maps, so you can see where you are relative to roads, bodies of water, and so on. It's also got a few extra training statistics, like an endurance score and a heat acclimation score. The 255 and 955 have all of these same features. The only features that are meaningfully different between the x55 and x65 series are:The 255/955 have the older, always-on MIP screen, while the 265 has a smartphone-style AMOLED screen. I have more here on the difference between those screen types.The 255/955 don't have touchscreens. You’ll use the UP and DOWN buttons on the left side to scroll through options. The 255 can’t store music, unless you buy the 255 Music version. The 955 has music storage built in, just like the 265 and 965 do.The 255 doesn’t have Training Readiness, but it does have Training Status. (Personally, I never use Training Readiness, so this isn’t much of a loss. You can always look at your HRV trend, which the watch also reports, if you want a sense of how recovered you are each morning.) The 955, 265, and 965 all have Training Readiness.For the detailed list of every minor feature that’s different between the two, you can check out this comparison page on Garmin’s site. Which Forerunner 255 version you should getThere is only one Forerunner 955, but there are four versions of the 255, and two versions of the 265. The regular Forerunner 255 is the larger size (45.6 mm) and does not have music storage. The Forerunner 255S is the smaller size (41 mm) and also does not have music storage.The Forerunner 255 Music is the larger size (45.6 mm) and does have music storage, so you can play tunes from the watch while leaving your phone at home.The Forerunner 255S Music is the smaller size (41 mm) with music storage.  Personally, I always have my phone with me when I run, so I’ve never found the standalone music feature very helpful. If you think you might use it, though, it’s normally a $50 upgrade, but currently only a $20 upgrade on the larger size of the watch.To help you decide, the photo above shows the difference in screens between the AMOLED 265S (left) and MIP 255 (right). It also shows the size difference between the smaller and larger models; the 265S on the left is 41.7 mm, very close to the 255S at 41 mm. How old is the 255, anyway? The 255 is only one year older than the 265. They were released in 2022 and 2023, respectively. Before that, Forerunner releases tended to be three to four years apart. The quick turnaround between the 255 and 265 makes sense when you realize they’re basically the same watch with a different display.So I wouldn’t expect a 255 to feel outdated anytime soon. The main question you need to ask yourself is: How do I feel about a MIP screen? I’ve written more about the difference between MIP and AMOLED here. MIP screens don’t light up, although they have a backlight that can come on automatically when you raise your wrist. At rest, they are “always on,” in the sense that they’re always displaying something, so you’ll never look down at a blank screen. They’re also brightly reflective in sunlight. AMOLED screens are more like a smartphone screen, with glowing pixels, and watches typically turn off the display when you’re not using it to save energy. (You can enable an always-on setting, but it eats battery.) That said, the overall battery life on both watches is similar on default settings—14 days not counting activities for the 255, and 13 days for the 265. Some people prefer the MIP screens, and if that includes you, this is a no-brainer: snag the 255 or 955. You can even get a refurbished version for $179.99, which makes this one of the cheapest Garmin watches in any line. The bottom line (check prices) Prices on Forerunners have been fluctuating lately, so I'm hesitant to give any dollar-for-dollar comparisons, but here's what I'm seeing at the moment I write this. Officially, Garmin is selling the 255 and 265 for the same price, $349.99. The 955 and 965 are going for the same price, $499.99. At those prices, you might as well get the -65 version of whichever watch you prefer. But over on Amazon, I'm seeing prices as low as $247 for the 255 and $373 for the 955. That means a 255 is the same price as the anemic Forerunner 165 (it's OK as a budget watch, but it's missing a lot of features that the 255/265 have) and the 955 is the same price as a 265! Check prices to see if these deals are still live by the time you read this, and ultimately decide based on features.

Menu Home News Hardware Gaming Mobile Finance Deals Reviews How To Wccftech Mobile Apple Vision Pro Price Guessed Incorrectly Multiple Times On ‘The Price Is Right’ Show For The 256GB Version, Despite The Headset Garnering Massive Attention Worldwide Omar Sohail • May 15, 2025 at 12:48am EDT The astronomical number of eyeballs on the Apple Vision Pro during the WWDC 2024 keynote highlighted the product’s uniqueness, while also introducing a price tag that would make interested parties gulp upon hearing the figure, but it appears that some are not aware of how much the device costs. On ‘The Price Is Right’ show, the 256GB model was showcased for four contestants, and while the mixed reality headset generated heaps of attention around several regions, it appears that there might be a few who have little clue about how ludicrously expensive the headset really is. Out of the four contestants who tried guessing the Apple Vision Pro’s price, none of them managed to come close to the actual figure On Threads, Justin Ryan posted a video that was spotted by AppleInsider, where the host asks four contestants how much they think the 256GB model of the Apple Vision Pro costs. Given that the firm has a trillion-dollar status and the majority of individuals would be familiar with the pricing, it is interesting that none of the four people came even remotely close to the head-mounted wearable’s $3,499 figure, indicating that regular buyers expected it to be significantly more affordable than it already is. The objective of The Price Is Right is to guess the product’s price without going overboard. The closest that one of the contestants came to the Apple Vision Pro was $1,270, and even then, it was not half of the device’s $3,499 retail price in the U.S. for the 256GB model. Then again, Apple CEO Tim Cook previously stated that the AR headset was never something that was targeted to the masses, but aimed at those who wanted to experience tomorrow’s technology today. It appears that there are few affluent technology enthusiasts around because the Apple Vision Pro did not even garner 500,000 shipped units, highlighting that an affordable alternative could be a potential solution to help the California-based giant ramp up shipments worldwide. As for the remaining three contestants, one mentioned a price of $750, with the second one guessing a figure of $1,000, and the last one believing that the Apple Vision Pro costs $1,001. News Source: justinryan.io Deal of the Day Subscribe to get an everyday digest of the latest technology news in your inbox Follow us on Topics Sections Company Some posts on wccftech.com may contain affiliate links. We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate advertising program designed to provide a means for sites to earn advertising fees by advertising and linking to amazon.com © 2025 WCCF TECH INC. 700 - 401 West Georgia Street, Vancouver, BC, Canada