New tech finds from our Latest & Greatest this August

Samsung Galaxy Z Fold8

The Galaxy Z Fold8 takes Samsung’s foldable design and reworks it into a wider and shorter “passport-style” form factor. Pairing a 5.5-inch cover screen with a 7.6-inch inner display, the unique aspect ratio (10:16 on the cover, 4:3 on the inner) on both sides shifts how apps appear, creating more space to get things done. It also feels very different when using it to read ebooks, articles, comic books, and graphic novels.

Running on the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 processor, this smartphone maintains smooth performance. Multitasking is the clearest strength. Split-screen and floating windows take advantage of the wider canvas, letting you drag files between apps or keep a video running while replying to messages. The camera system is fine but it takes a back seat to the phone’s productivity focus. Battery life holds up fairly well with all the mixed usage, though mileage can vary from day to day.

Garmin CIRQA fitness tracker

It doesn’t look like a Garmin off the bat because there’s no screen—but the CIRQA is no less of a health and fitness tracker. You can wear it on your wrist or upper arm by simply attaching the fabric strap with a hook-and-loop fastener. And since there’s no screen, the whole device only weighs about 21 grams. There’s a single side button you press to start an activity, but the device generally tracks movement automatically. You can then see the results in the Garmin Connect app.

The best part is it covers the usual Garmin health metrics that work so well, like heart rate, Body Battery energy tracking, stress, sleep score, training status, and women’s health tracking including skin-temperature-based cycle predictions. You do need to keep your phone close by just to see the data visually and utilize the phone’s GPS. It’s also pretty durable with 5ATM water resistance (including saltwater), meaning you can wear it while swimming and snorkeling but not ideal for diving. Not to mention at least a week of battery life. Plus, no subscription fee.

Skullcandy Crusher 1080 ANC

The Skullcandy Crusher headphone lineup has long been about bringing out the bass and leaving you to decide whether you ramp it up or not. The 1080 ANC takes that further by partnering with Bose to deliver a suite of audio features. It includes Bose’s active noise cancellation (ANC), its TrueSpatial processing for a wider soundstage, and tuning to give all audio a noticeable quality boost.

As always with Crusher headphones, there’s a wheel on the earcup to adjust how much bass you want to hear. Needless to say, it delivers a serious rumble. You can dial it down for extra clarity or push it up to hear that rumble. The Skullcandy app also offers these controls, along with a slew of other settings and personal customizations to make them truly your own. Depending on volume, battery life goes up to 50 hours per charge, and multipoint connectivity means you can stay paired with two devices simultaneously.

ASUS Zenbook 14

The ASUS Zenbook 14 is at least one answer to the MacBook Air, as it aims to be both highly portable and functional as a laptop that can do a few things well. Running on an AMD Ryzen AI 7 445 processor with 16GB of RAM and 1TB SSD, there’s enough headroom to work with demanding apps. That doesn’t necessarily make it a creator-focused laptop but certainly a productivity-driven one. On-device tasks run through the dedicated NPU at up to 50 trillion operations per second—delivering fast, efficient AI performance. Much like a GPU focuses on graphics, the NPU focuses on AI performance.

The 14-inch OLED display runs at 1920 x 1200 resolution with a 60Hz refresh rate and up to 600 nits of brightness for vibrant colours and deep blacks. At 2.65 lbs. and 14.9mm thick, it’s easy to carry around wherever work takes you. Battery life in real terms ranges between 6-12 hours depending on what you’re working on.

A backlit keyboard with a sizeable touchpad remains standard like past Zenbooks, along with a webcam that includes a privacy shutter and facial login. As for ports, you two USB-C ports, one with data speed up to 40Gbps, plus a USB-A port, HDMI 2.1, and 3.5mm headphone jack.

HOVERAir AQUA quadcopter drone

The HoverAir AQUA is unlike other drones in that it can take to the air and drop right into the water all in one go. That doesn’t mean it can submerge and take underwater footage but it can capture video and still photos while capturing watersports on the surface with similar speed. Like a snorkeler, it also has a camera pointing straight down, so in clearer waters, it can see directly below at 90 degrees to capture cool marine life underneath. This makes it a really versatile way to catch adventurous action for kayakers, paddleboarders, surfers, or anyone else looking for some dynamism.

It weighs under 249 grams, so it falls on the right side of drone rules in Canada, recording 4K video at up to 100fps in both wet and dry conditions. You control it through a wearable Lighthouse beacon on your wrist that keeps the drone locked onto you, so you don’t have to manually pilot it for many shots. That includes simple one-tap commands for takeoff, landing, and mode switching without needing a phone.