The Starlink Mini satellite dish is now even better thanks to the $119 LinkPower 1 power bank from PeakDo. The battery locks securely to the back of SpaceX’s smallest terminal and provides over 4.5 hours of uninterrupted Internet connectivity. The LinkPower’s battery can also charge simultaneously over USB-C from your car, solar generator, or solar panel for indefinite Internet use. Then the tidy little package can be slipped into a backpack or tote for your next adventure.

Starlink is a life-changing Internet service that connects people and villages too remote for towers and cables to reach. My own Starlink Mini has been critical in helping me pursue life as a digital nomad from almost anywhere in Europe. And right now, Starlink’s the only game in town for relatively cheap and fast consumer internet that can be quickly deployed into data dead spots. 

My overriding thought after using the PeakDo LinkPower for the last few weeks is this: why doesn’t SpaceX make one of these?

PeakDo LinkPower 1 Power Bank

Score: 9

Pros	Cons
Delivers over 4.5 hours of untethered Internet No specialized gear to manage and lose Powers Starlink while simultaneously recharging for indefinite use Makes placement easier without running cables	Weak resistance to dust and water Janky web app

Where to Buy:

• $119 at PeakDo

The LinkPower power bank bungs 99Wh right into the slot on the back of the Starlink Mini just like one of SpaceX’s official mounts. It powers the little dish via a short DC-to-DC barrel connector. It makes the Starlink Mini a self-contained unit that can be placed anywhere within Wi-Fi range. That includes on top of your vehicle or shack, or in a distant clearing where it has a clear line-of-sight to satellites overhead — no super long power cable required.

The PeakDo unit has a bi-directional USB-C PD port to charge devices like your phone at up to 65W, or to share 100W of input to simultaneously power the Starlink and charge the LinkPower’s battery. An integrated display lets you monitor the power on both ports.

The single button on the LinkPower acts like an on/off switch for the Starlink Mini. Press it once to turn on the integrated display or hold it down to turn on the DC output that powers the Starlink Mini. The USB-C port is always on standby to deliver power, but I didn’t notice any vampire drain as a result. For example, I put it away with a 98 percent charge, and five days later it still said 98 percent.

Remote monitoring and control are possible over Bluetooth with a web app. This works on Android, Mac (with Chrome), and PC desktops, but iPhones require a special browser that supports Web Bluetooth APIs. It was a little janky regardless of platform, but also useful when the dish was sitting on the roof of my van, for example. It’s the only way to access advanced features such as creating on/off schedules for the Starlink Mini. 

I averaged a whopping 4 hours and 35 minutes of battery life over repeated tests, with seven devices active on the Starlink Mini. When I reviewed the Mini back in October, I was only getting about 3 hours from my own 99Wh power bank – a good indication that the continuous stream of firmware updates delivered to my Starlink Mini terminal have improved power efficiency. That runtime can be extended by plugging a USB-C cable between the LinkPower and your car, power station, portable solar panel, or even a standard power bank you might use for your phone. 

Normally, the Starlink Mini requires an AC wall jack or newer battery with a 100W (20V/5A) USB-C PD port to operate, along with specialized cables fitted with weather-resistant 5221 barrel jacks. But with the PeakDo LinkPower plugged in, you can easily keep it charged with the same gear that charges your laptops, phones, and other USB-C gadgets. My Sprinter van’s USB-C jacks only provide about 19W of power, but a USB-C adapter plugged into its 12V socket produces over 30W of the 120W available, easily covering the 22W average power draw of the Starlink Mini. Not having to worry about carrying special equipment – those SpaceX cables are long! – just for the Starlink Mini has been incredibly liberating.

It took 2 hours and 30 minutes to fully recharge the PeakDo LinkPower over USB-C from a 100W source, while simultaneously keeping the StarLink Mini running. The LinkPower’s display was showing 55W – 60W coming in over USB-C to charge the battery, and another 18W – 26W over DC to power the Starlink Mini. I found the USB-C charging rate maxed out at about 60W, whether the Starlink was being powered or not. And pulling the USB-C charger never interfered with the operation of the Starlink Mini when starting or stopping the van.

One knock against the PeakDo LinkPower’s battery is its resistance to dust and water. It has an IPX4 rating, significantly worse than the Starlink Mini’s IP67 rating. That means the LinkPower is not certified against dust — though PeakDo calls it “dustproof” — and it’s only tested to resist splashing water. So, it’s probably not a good idea to mount it on the roof when driving in rain or on dusty roads. Regardless, the Starlink Mini works well from inside moving vehicles when mounted against a glass sunroof or sitting on the dashboard of a van.

PeakDo claims an operating range of 60 degrees Celsius (140 degrees Fahrenheit) to -20 C (-4F). That means the battery should be fine on top of your vehicle’s extra hot roof during sunny summer days, but could struggle in very cold winters. The Starlink Mini’s operating temperature range is 50C (122F) to -30C (-22F).

Using the LinkPower means you can’t use the kickstand or other SpaceX mount with the Starlink Mini. The power bank does have three ¼-inch holes for a tripod or other aftermarket mounts if you’re really bent on locking in a perfect orientation to the sky. I don’t bother with this: it’s never made much difference in my months of regular use.

I don’t have any real gripes with PeakDo’s LinkPower power bank. The battery adds an additional 645g (1.42lb) to the 1.1kg (2.43lb) Starlink Mini, making it feel solid, not heavy. It was previously at risk of blowing away in strong winds. At $119, it costs about twice as much as other 99Wh power banks with 100W USB-C PD outputs, but it’s worth it. 

By untethering the Starlink Mini, the PeakDo LinkPower 1 power bank opens up a world of new placement possibilities. Everything you need is in a self-contained kit that can be fired up with the press of a button for over four hours of operation — or longer with a simple USB-C power source. I already gave the ultra-portable Starlink Mini a 9/10 when I reviewed it last year. Making it ultra-convenient with some help from PeakDo edges it even closer to perfection for people with a desire to get up and go.

Photography by Thomas Ricker / The Verge

I seldom sleep in the same place for more than a couple of weeks at a time, so I’m a big fan of portable all-in-one projectors. They’re small and set up quickly, making them ideal for vanlife, gaming parties, outdoor movie nights, or an evening in on the couch — but they usually sacrifice quality for convenience. Anker’s new Nebula X1 projector promises to produce an incredibly bright and color-accurate 4K image with excellent sound while remaining portable and quiet.

Typically, if portability is at the top of your wish list, then sound and picture quality will suffer. Prioritize a cinematic experience and you’re looking at an expensive, hulking, noisy device that requires permanent placement inside a home theater. Over a month of testing across endless firmware updates and a variety of viewing conditions, the Nebula X1 did a superb job of striking the right balance with very few tradeoffs, delivering on Anker’s promise.

But with a price starting at $2,999, or $3,998 for a kit that includes the highly recommended satellite speakers, it’s not exactly cheap. And at close to 25 pounds (11.3kg) for the entire bundle — the Nebula X1 is more luggable than portable.

Anker Nebula X1

Score: 9

Pros	Cons
Unbelievably bright Excellent image on a variety of surfaces Incredible sound for a portable Automatic everything with manual overrides Netflix works out of the box	Expensive 4.1.2 channel separation is trash Satellite speakers can drop connection Large and heavy for a portable

Where to Buy:

• $2999 $2549 at Amazon (projector only)
• $2999 at Anker (projector only)
• $3998 at Anker (bundle)

The Nebula X1 is a 3500 ANSI lumen triple-laser 4K projector with integrated four-speaker sound system. It runs Google TV so you get built-in Chromecast, Google Assistant, and an official Netflix app (unlike many all-in-one projectors) that streams media over Wi-Fi 6. It includes a pair of USB and HDMI 2.1 ports (one supporting eARC) to attach your favorite game console or media drive. A satisfying, recessed handle pops up with a push to make the 13.7 pound (6.2kg) projection unit portable.

There’s a long list of features that make the X1 unique for a portable projector:

• An all-glass 14-element lens that won’t yellow over time, mounted onto a 25-degree motorized mechanical swivel that avoids inferior digital tricks while increasing placement options.
• Liquid cooling that all but eliminates noise.
• Optical zoom coupled with a 0.9:1 to 1.5:1 throw ratio gives you giant images, up to 300 inches diagonally, when placed closer to the screen than typical projectors.
• Class-leading 200W of sound when adding Anker’s highly recommended 80W battery-powered, water-resistant, Wi-Fi-connected speakers.

Note: I did my best with the photographs, but they can only approximate the brightness, color, and contrast viewed with the naked eye.

Image

I’ll just say it: the X1’s image quality is unmatched for a go-anywhere all-in-one projector. Its 3500 ANSI lumen output is better than many home theater projectors, allowing it to produce a vivid image across a range of challenging environments with no apparent optical distortion. It looked great at default settings when tested in a variety of lighting situations on painted walls, a traditional white-matte pulldown screen, a gray Ambient Light Rejection (ALR) screen, and a small folding Ikea tabletop.

The X1 will attempt to dynamically balance the colors and contrast on whatever surface it detects. Mostly it works, but colors, especially reds, tend to be over-saturated out of the box, making Gwyneth Paltrow’s face overly ruddy, especially on my ALR screen. Anker offers plenty of manual overrides to dial in the exact image you prefer with just a few minutes of work. 

The X1’s lumen count made casual viewings possible in spaces flooded with ambient light. At times, I found the image to be too bright, especially when all that light was focused into a 32-inch diagonal on a glossy Ikea panel from just five feet (about 1.5 meters) away. Fortunately, you can manually reduce the power and iris settings to dim the image. That class-leading brightness makes the X1’s HDR10 and Dolby Vision support more than just checkmarks on a sales sheet — color is mostly accurate with plenty of contrast, but it’s still a DLP projector, so don’t expect true blacks. The X1’s lumen count should also do a decent job with 3D if you own DLP 3D glasses (I did not test this).

Convenience

Importantly for a portable, the Nebula X1 features all the automatic placement features you’d expect. These include automatic focus, keystone correction, and obstacle avoidance, as well as automatic color adaptation to optimize the image based on the color of the paint or material used on the projection surface. These can be triggered manually from the device, Nebula app, or remote control, or set to engage at startup and when the projector is moved.

Autofocus worked 100 percent of the time, while the automatic placement features worked well when there was a clear border. I had to manually correct the edges more often than not when projected onto a blank white wall.

Startup is relatively fast. You can begin navigating Google TV in about 45 seconds from a cold boot, or just a few seconds if resuming from standby.

There’s also an “Extreme” game mode that disables digital keystone correction and motion smoothing to devote all that background processing to faster response times. For casual game play, the very slight lag is something you quickly get used to. The bundled mics, I can confirm, are fun for karaoke nights.

Sound

Sound is the killer feature of the Nebula X1. Even without the satellites, the sound is clear and immersive and easily fills a room. Connecting the optional battery-powered satellite speakers over a direct, low-latency 5.8GHz Wi-Fi connection to the main unit takes things to another level.

The satellites link automatically at startup and transform the X1’s four internal speakers into a makeshift subwoofer, while the three speakers in each satellite take over responsibility for center, top, and side channels. The resulting soundscape is wide and impressive and plenty loud enough for a group to enjoy outdoors — so long as you have accommodating neighbors. There’s also a “Bluetooth Speaker Mode” that turns off the projection lamp to play music with plenty of bass when full, rich, warm audio is all the entertainment required. I used this feature several hours a day which helps to maximize value for money.

With the audio turned down the projector is largely silent thanks to its liquid cooling. The fan kicked in on an especially hot day of testing, but I could barely hear it (measuring just 26dB from a distance of 1 meter) over the regular din of a living room or waves crashing beyond. 

As expected, the X1 did not deliver on the promise of 4.2.1 surround sound. I struggled to hear any simulated channel separation from overhead or behind. Anker lists some strict placement requirements that I couldn’t meet exactly in testing — you might have better luck. Those satellites also dropped connection occasionally requiring manual intervention that sometimes resulted in an audible pop. It’s a little annoying, and has improved with each firmware update.

I saw 19 hours of battery life from those satellites (the projector does not have a battery) in my testing. That included two hours of film watched outdoors at a loud 50 percent volume, and the rest spent vibing to music at a relaxed 20 to 30 percent. Those IP54-rated satellite speakers even survived a small rain shower when I forgot them outside once.

Overall, I don’t have any real complaints. Sometimes the automatic image placement features can miss the mark, but I find them far more useful than annoying. Sometimes the satellite speakers don’t pair properly, but that can be quickly fixed with a power toggle. The Google UI verges on sluggish at times, but it’s faster than any other portable implementation I’ve tried. And I’ve seen far too many firmware updates, but things keep improving.

Anker’s Nebula X1 has left me utterly impressed. It produces incredibly immersive sound for its size, alongside a bright, vivid image comparable to home theater projectors costing closer to $5,000. The Nebula X1 with the satellite speaker bundle is expensive at $3,998, but anyone who finds themselves in need of a projector that can quickly approximate a home theater experience anywhere they go will get their money’s worth.

Photography by Thomas Ricker / The Verge

Slate Auto’s American-made electric pickup — the one with no paint, no stereo, and no touchscreen — is no longer priced “under $20,000.” The increase is a result of Trump’s “Big, beautiful bill,” which will end the federal EV tax credits on September 30th when signed into law later today.

That sub-$20,000 price for the Indiana-built pickup was a big selling point for the EV startup backed by Jeff Bezos, and was only possible after applying the $7,500 tax credit to the retail price. The price promotion was scrubbed from the Slate Auto site as recently as yesterday, according to TechCrunch. The website now shows an expected price of “mid-twenties.”

Slate’s under $20,000 price tag for a vehicle it won’t start delivering until late 2026 was always accompanied by an asterisk, with fine print highlighting federal incentives that were “subject to change.” And change was certainly expected: Trump campaigned heavily on the promise to end President Biden’s fictitious “EV mandate,” because electric cars are for socialists in MAGA world.

Trump’s embrace of oil and gas, while simultaneously dismantling incentives meant to spur the adoption of EVs and clean energies, is a gift to Chinese makers of electric cars, solar panels, and batteries. The US is now on course to own the past while China is firmly positioned to dominate the future.

Dutch bicycle brand Veloretti just announced a slimmed-down version of its excellent Electric Two series of electric bikes for European commuters.

The step-over Ace Two Lite is a lighter and less expensive version of the very heavy Ace Two e-bike I reviewed back in 2023, which ditches the sublime Enviolo automatic shifter in favor of a simpler single-speed, belt-driven transmission. It’s being sold alongside the step-through Ivy Two Lite for €2,599. The original Ace Two and Ivy Two e-bikes live on, only now they carry a Pro suffix and a new lower price of €2,999. That gives Veloretti a collection of e-bikes that straddle the €2,681 European average.

I should note that the Lite models aren’t exactly lightweight. They shave 3kg (6.61 pounds) off the Pro frames, putting them at 27kg (59.5 pounds) instead of 30kg (66.1 pounds). That’s still heavy, but Veloretti e-bikes ride super sturdy when carrying around groceries or kids as Europeans are apt to do — with hydraulic brakes that carry over to the Lite models to bring everything to a controlled stop. 

The removable 540Wh battery is still there too, which contributes another 3kg (6.61 pounds) to the overall weight. That large battery is capable of providing between 60-120km of range, which varies based upon the rider, chosen power-assist level, weather, and terrain. The Lite models still feature integrated front and rear lighting, but the brake-light feature has been removed. I’d have preferred that Veloretti ditched its overwrought integrated display, but it lives to fight another day. 

The Ace Two Lite is available in graphite or matte black, while the Ivy Two Lite is only available in matte black. They’re available to buy now with delivery in 6 to 8 weeks.