You need to listen to these Christmas deep cuts
It's the holiday season, and Christmas music is utterly inescapable. Look, I love Mariah Carey and Wham! As much as the next guy. But at some point, you get really tired of hearing the same handful of Christmas songs over and over again. So here are 10 suggestions to add to your holiday playlist that are hopefully a little less obvious.
Tom Waits - Christmas Card from a Hooker in Minneapolis
There's a long history of downer Christmas songs, from Dolly Parton's "Hard Candy Christmas" to The Pogues' "Fairytale of New York." But there is no holiday song more guaranteed to bring the party down than "Christmas Card from a Hooker in Mi …
The 35 best gifts that your teen will actually use
Between keeping up with TikTok trends and whatever new gadget just dropped, it's tough to know exactly what teens are into these days. Luckily, we can help. We may be older than teenagers, but many of us here at The Verge are kids at heart. Plus, we've also got a few staffers with older kids. To make your life a little easier this holiday season, we rounded up what we think are the best gifts for teens, based on our tech expertise as well as what our staff's teens are into right now.
Below, you'll find gift ideas for many types of teens. Some are more obvious choices, like the latest iPhone and Nintendo Switch 2, but we sought to include a …
Job killer
Park Chan-wook's 12th feature-length movie, No Other Choice, begins with Man-su (Lee Byung-hun) as a proud patriarch at the barbecue, a vision of the platonic ideal domestic life he will spend most of the movie defending. In the long middle where life is lived, the movie offers its audience mirth and pathos and deep social critique. Also: murders. After being laid off from a paper company, Man-su realizes that his best chance at getting hired for his next job is to knock off the three other qualified candidates.
Adapted from Donald Westlake's novel The Ax, No Other Choice captures - most delightfully and cathartically - the perpetual and un …
The best thing I bought this year: The Nintendo Switch 2
I waited for the Nintendo Switch 2 for a long time. Rumors of an allegedly-real-but-never-released Switch Pro swirled around for years as I watched fewer and fewer AAA third-party games make their way to Nintendo’s little console that could. There were always enough first-party titles and indie games to tide me over, but I watched with some envy as games like Elden Ring took the world by storm, knowing I’d have to wait until Nintendo’s next generation hardware arrived to add them to my Switch library. Now, finally, it’s here.
The Switch 2’s core strength for me boils down to it being a better version of the original Switch. Its 7.9-inch 120Hz 1080P screen looks sharp — yes, an OLED display would have been nicer, but I’m not complaining — and its ability to output at up to 4K, or up to 120Hz at lower resolutions, is a welcome improvement. It can play most original Nintendo Switch games, some of which have been updated through free or paid patches to run at a higher frame rate or resolution.
The only native Switch 2 game I’ve played so far is Mario Kart World, which I picked up as part of a bundle with the system. My most-played game is the original Switch title The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom, which runs at 4K and 60 frames per second if you get the Switch 2 edition for $10 (it’s a free download if you have an active Nintendo Switch Online subscription). That subscription also allows me to play a growing number of GameCube games available as Nintendo Classics, including titles I didn’t get to play when I was a kid.
I specifically put off playing games from my backlog, including titles going back several years, until I could play them on a larger display in handheld mode, and I don’t regret my decision. Putting dozens of hours into Octopath Traveler while chilling on the couch with the big-screen handheld was a heck of a lot of fun. Nintendo and third-party developers have also been pretty generous with releasing free demos of Nintendo Switch 2 titles, including Donkey Kong Bananza and Final Fantasy VII Remake Intergrade, so it’s possible to sample bigger titles before deciding to pick them up.
My only real complaint with the Nintendo Switch 2 is its 256GB of internal storage, which isn’t enough for folks like me who’ve built up a large digital library of Switch games. Adding more requires you to pop in a microSD Express card, which can be twice the price of than the regular microSD cards used by the original Switch. My hope is that if a hardware revision comes down the line it’ll include an OLED display and at least 512GB of storage. By that time microSD Express cards will have hopefully become more affordable.
The console’s $449.99 starting price came as a shock to many, but it seems fair given its tech specs, and an escalating tariff situation that delayed the Switch 2’s preorder timing in North America and compelled Nintendo to raise the price of the original Nintendo Switch. Nintendo recently announced that it “will shift our primary development focus to Nintendo Switch 2 and expand our business around this new platform.” I’ll continue to look forward to exclusive titles making their way to my new console of choice, along with ports of third-party games that I haven’t gotten around to yet.
How AIM taught the internet to chat
If you were an internet user around the turn of the century, there's a good chance I could play a one-second long sound of a door opening and memories would immediately come flooding back. Memories of running home from school and logging onto AOL Instant Messenger to chat with your friends or your crush. Maybe memories of how AIM changed the way your company did business. Certainly memories of your old screen name, and the angsty song lyrics you put into your away message.
AIM was, for a time, the most important chat app on the internet. It also barely managed to continue to exist. The app was created by a semi-rogue team inside of AOL, and …
2025: a year in art on The Verge
The Verge art team's favorite projects this year spanned the circus surrounding DOGE, the myths of the Vietnam War, the privacy crisis for trans people online, the vast surveillance network aimed at tracking down Iranian military dissidents, and much more. We built a kaleidoscope to showcase some standout products from The Verge's gift guides, sent an illustrator to the crowded halls of the courthouse to draw Luigi Mangione fans and spectators live, and dug deep into the confusing world of News Daddy to create collages about how college students get their news. Here's a look back at some of what we made this year.
Wikipedia is resilient b …
Humanoid robots are coming. Eventually?
This is The Stepback, a weekly newsletter breaking down one essential story from the tech world. For more on robotics and AI, follow Robert Hart. The Stepback arrives in our subscribers' inboxes at 8AM ET. Opt in for The Stepback here.
We're taking a winter break! The Stepback will be back on January 11th, 2026. Meanwhile, you catch up on past issues here.
How it started
I have a soft spot for robot fail videos. I watch them on a loop, chuckling to myself, as a kind of therapy. Maybe I'm a sadist, maybe I need to get out more - you can judge me later - but they get me every time. So naturally, I've been glued to a clip of Tesla's Optimus …
Our favorite stuff of 2025
Hi, friends! Welcome to Installer No. 110, your guide to the best and Verge-iest stuff in the world. (If you're new here, welcome, happy holidays, and also you can read all the old editions at the Installer homepage.)
This week, I've been reading about mall Santas and malleable software and phone bans, wondering how I barely know any of the songs in DJ Earworm's annual mashup, waiting patiently for Ugmonk's Layflat notebooks to go back on sale, finally setting up my Switch 2 Camera for some holiday gaming, trying desperately to not come in last place in my fantasy football league, using MCP to build some really weird note-taking workflows …
The Verge’s 2025 holiday gift guide
The holidays have a way of sneaking up on us. One minute you're trick-or-treating with your kids, and the next you're panic shopping in a Buc-ee's gift aisle. But it doesn't have to be that way. With the right cheat sheet, you can keep the holiday spirit high and stress levels low.
Fortunately, we did some planning on your behalf. As much as we love playing with the latest gadgets and gizmos here at The Verge, we also love recommending them. That's why, after consulting with our expert team of writers and editors, we've compiled a medley of gift ideas that won't be regifted come this time next year - from noise-canceling earbuds and e-reade …
Sony’s XM5 headphones and the latest Kindle round out this week’s best deals
If you’re feeling the stress of having procrastinated on your holiday shopping — and you missed out during Black Friday and Cyber Monday — we’ve got you. We’ve found a variety of gadgets on sale that make for great gifts, many of which will ship in time for the holidays. One of the standouts is the current promo on Sony’s noise-canceling WH-1000XM5 headphones, which are on sale with a free pair of wireless earbuds. Other deals you may have missed include steep discounts on Amazon’s latest entry-level Kindle and the new Echo Dot Max.
Sony WH-1000XM5
Where to Buy:
Sony’s last-gen WH-1000XM5 have consistently impressed us with their audio quality, active noise cancellation, and comfort. And right now, Amazon is offering them with a free pair of Sony’s WF-C700N earbuds for $248 ($152 off). The headphones have an updated design that includes a thinner headband, more memory foam in the ear pads, and repositioned mics that reduce wind noise when taking calls. These changes didn’t add much weight, and the headphones still get 30 hours of playtime with ANC enabled.
The XM5 sounded “more refined, detailed, and spacious” in our tests, but we noticed less oomph when listening to EDM or hip-hop tracks with a lot of bass. The headphones have eight microphones, four of which are for voice, and their excellent noise reduction on calls was immediately noticeable, even in louder environments. The $89.99 WF-C700N, meanwhile, are a midrange pair of noise-canceling earbuds with an IPX4 rating, up to seven and a half hours of battery life (with ANC enabled), and a slim design.
Read our full Sony WH-1000XM5 review.
Kindle (11th-gen)
Where to Buy:
Amazon’s 11th-gen Kindle is our favorite budget-friendly e-reader, and you can pick up the ad-supported version for $89.99 ($20 off) at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target. The entry-level ebook reader features a six-inch 300ppi E Ink display that won’t show glare from the sun like your phone or tablet. It has enough storage space to hold thousands of books, or dozens of audiobooks from Audible, the latter of which you can play via Bluetooth headphones or speakers.
The Kindle’s built-in battery lasts up to six weeks, depending on how long you read per day and how reliant you are on its backlight, and recharges over USB-C. It has the same screen resolution and storage as the step-up Kindle Paperwhite, but it’s not waterproof, which may matter if you like to read at the beach or in the bath.
Echo Dot Max
Where to Buy:
Amazon’s last-minute “Super Saturday” sale is underway, though, we’d argue some of the better deals are actually some the lingering discounts we’re seeing on Amazon’s own devices, many of which have been effect for several weeks. Right now, for instance, you can grab the new Echo Dot Max at Amazon, Best Buy, and Target for $79.99 ($20 off), which is the best price we’ve seen on the smart speaker since it launched.
Despite the name, the Dot Max is less of a follow up to the Echo Dot as it is the fourth-gen Echo from 2020. It’s got a compact knit fabric design, simpler controls, a better processor, and more smart home sensors and radios than prior models (it offers support for Matter, Thread, and Zigbee protocols). It still sounds great for its size, though, and like prior models, it can function as an Wi-Fi extender if you’re looking buoy a Eero mesh network. It’s also one of the first devices to offer Amazon’s AI-powered Alexa Plus out of the box, which, while still very much a work in progress, is a step in the right direction.
Read our full Echo Dot Max review.
Several more great deals
- Hollow Knight: Silksong is one of the best games we’ve played all year, and the PC version is down to an all-time low of $15.99 ($4 off) on Steam as part of the store’s annual Winter Sale. The boss battles and platforming sections of the difficult-but-fair Metroidvania require persistence to clear, but feel great when you do. You’ll face over 200 enemies and 40 bosses as you make your way through Pharloom, and you’ll need to refine your techniques using weapons and traps to find the best way to take them down. Read our hands-on impressions.
- If your room needs a little more fun, Amazon and Target have knocked the price of the Lego’s “Up” House down to $30.39 (about $30 off) for a limited time. The 598-piece set includes mini figures of Carl Fredricksen, Russell, and Dug the dog, along with the kit’s titular house — complete with plenty of balloons. Turning the house around reveals a lot of detail within different rooms, with custom bricks depicting props from the movie.
- We once dubbed the Keychron V1 Max the “Toyota Corolla of keyboards” because of its reliability and value. That’s especially true today, given Amazon has marked the model with quieter Silent K Pro Red switches down to $95.99 ($24 off), which matches the lowest price we’ve seen on the mechanical keyboard. Each key can be remapped in the Keychron Launcher web app, and you can swap its switches to suit your preferences. You can also alternate connecting the V1 Max to your device with a USB-C cable, 2.4GHz adapter (included), or Bluetooth.