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Plaud One is AI earbuds that don’t just record your meetings, they act on them

Marty
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Plaud One is AI earbuds that don’t just record your meetings, they act on them

I’ve said it before with both the Viaim RecDot notetaking earbuds and the Soundcore Liberty 5 Pro Max, AI notetaking is one of the rare corners of the current AI wave that’s actually earned its keep rather than just generating slop. I’ve lived the same real world example for me, sitting through a call with a doctor, getting hit with a wall of unfamiliar medical terms, and not having to white knuckle every word because you can read the summary back afterwards. That’s useful technology at it’s very best. In a world of pervert glasses, it’s a real use and not a novelty. Plaud reckons it’s ready to push the idea a step further with Plaud One, wearable AI earbuds that launched as a limited preorder last week and don’t stop at transcribing what you hear, they’re built to act on it too.

Plaud One is a pair of earbuds paired with a charging case, and either one can capture a conversation on its own. The case has its own 4G eSIM, so it works even without your phone nearby, picking up a whole room from up to five metres away. Everything gets automatically transcribed and summarised, and that’s where most AI notetakers stop. Plaud promises the One keeps going, using what it calls Plaud Agent to turn that context into actual output, drafting a follow up email, updating your calendar, or pulling together a report, by connecting into tools like Gmail, Google Calendar, Notion and Slack. It’s priced at £229 in the UK, or €249.90 through the EU store, and ships as a limited Explorer Edition of just 2,000 units.

It’s an interesting move for a category I already rate highly, but there’s a real catch for anyone reading this in Ireland, and I’ll get to that shortly.

What makes Plaud One different?

The short version is that Plaud One is trying to close the gap between hearing something and doing something about it. The RecDot and the Liberty 5 Pro Max are both very good at capture and summary, handing you a transcript and a tidy write up once the conversation ends. Plaud One wants to take that transcript and immediately put it to work, drafting the follow up, adding an action to your calendar, or briefing you on where a client conversation left off before you walk back into the room. Whether Plaud Agent is actually reliable enough to do that unsupervised is something nobody outside Plaud’s own testing group can answer yet, since this is a brand new device that hasn’t shipped to reviewers. Marty’s holds his breath.

On the hardware side it’s a fairly standard proposition for 2026. The earbuds are rated IP54 and the case IP52, there’s up to 40dB of adaptive noise cancellation, and a combined battery life of up to 36 hours between the buds and the case. The case alone can record continuously for up to 25 hours, which covers a full week of back to back meetings before you need to think about charging it.

Why this matters for meetings, and for accessibility

Beyond the productivity pitch, the bit that actually excites me is what this category could mean for people who struggle with live notetaking, whether that’s because English isn’t their first language, they have a condition that makes typing while listening difficult, or they simply can’t focus on the conversation and the minutes at the same time.

I’ve already made the case for the doctor’s appointment example, being able to focus entirely on what’s being said instead of scribbling notes and hoping you got the dosage right. Extend that same idea to a meeting room. Imagine a colleague who finds it hard to take notes and follow a fast moving discussion at once getting a full transcript and summary without having to ask anyone to slow down or repeat themselves. That’s not a stretch, it’s roughly what devices like the RecDot already do today. What Plaud is betting on is that the next step, an agent that drafts the follow up and books the next meeting off the back of that transcript, becomes something most people have access to within a few years rather than a novelty for early adopters. Look, I’d genuinely like to see that happen.

This levels the playing field.

What’s still to be proven about Plaud One

A few things here are worth a raised eyebrow before you get swept up in the pitch. Some of the features Plaud is promising, including voice control and multipoint pairing, are explicitly listed as arriving through future firmware updates rather than working out of the box. The credits bundled with the Explorer Edition are also a taster rather than a permanent free ride, and based on how Soundcore structured a very similar setup with the Liberty 5 Pro Max, I’d expect a recurring subscription waiting once you burn through them. And because this thing is designed to record conversations you’re not necessarily the only participant in, it’s worth remembering that Irish and EU law generally expects you to have consent from everyone on the call or in the room before you hit record, not just yourself.

The Explorer Edition opened for preorder at 2pm BST on 27 August 2026, priced at £229 through the UK store, with €249.90 the equivalent through the EU one. Every preorder comes with Plaud credits worth £150 or €176 depending on region, which cover Plaud Intelligence features without needing a separate subscription straight away. The catch is that Plaud is only shipping this limited run of 2,000 units to the United States, France, Germany, the UK, Italy, Spain, Canada and the Netherlands. Ireland isn’t on that list. At least not yet at the time I’m writing this, the initial preorder window has already closed too, with Plaud pointing new interest towards a waitlist rather than an open cart. Devices are expected to start shipping in the fourth quarter of this year, so anyone in Ireland hoping to get one at launch will need a friend with a UK or EU address, or to wait and see whether Plaud opens things up more broadly once this Explorer run sells through.

I like where Plaud is pointing with this. The shift from a device that just listens to one that actually does something with what it heard is the natural next step for this category, and it lines up with exactly the use cases I’ve been banging on about since the RecDot. But right now this is a limited run aimed at early adopters in a handful of markets, Ireland not included, and the interesting agent features are still mostly promises rather than something I’ve been able to test myself. Worth watching closely rather than rushing to import one. You can read the full spec sheet and join the waitlist on Plaud’s UK site.

DJI heads to IFA 2026 with three European debuts, and Ireland already has what the US is still waiting on

Marty
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DJI heads to IFA 2026 with three European debuts, and Ireland already has what the US is still waiting on

Every September, IFA in Berlin turns into a parade of tech firms insisting they’re not just the thing you already know them for. This year it’s DJI’s turn, and to be fair to them, the claim actually holds up. Best known for drones, the company is landing in Berlin from the 4th to the 8th of September with a 360 camera, a robot vacuum and a home solar system, and none of them are drones.

DJI will be showing off its full range at Hall 20-129, but the headline act is the Osmo 360 II, its new flagship 360 degree camera. It’s joined by two other European debuts, a second generation robot vacuum called the Romo 2 and a new addition to DJI’s home energy lineup built around balcony solar. Two more products already on sale, the Osmo Pocket 4P and the Mic Mini 2S, will also be on the stand for anyone who wants to get hands on before buying.

The Osmo 360 II

The short version is more dynamic range, better low light footage and tougher lenses. The Osmo 360 II shoots up to 8K at 60 frames a second, using a pair of 1/1.1 inch square sensors and a claimed 14.5 stops of dynamic range, up from 13.5 stops on the original Osmo 360. In plain terms, that’s the difference between a sky that blows out to white and one that keeps its detail while the ground underneath still holds shadow. DJI’s AI SuperNight 2.0 processing is aimed at cleaning up night and low light shots, and a new Spotlight Follow mode can track a subject automatically in the full 360 degree frame, then spit out a normal flat 4K video afterwards without you having to reframe it yourself in the app.

There’s 105GB of storage built in, good for around 100 minutes of continuous 8K recording, stretching to 120 minutes in the camera’s endurance mode. It’s waterproof to 10 metres on its own and 50 metres with DJI’s optional case, and for the first time on this camera, both lenses are user replaceable if you scratch or crack one, rather than needing to send the whole unit back to DJI. European pricing and availability haven’t been confirmed yet. DJI’s own announcement doesn’t mention a figure, so that’s one to watch for over the next while.

Romo 2 and the new balcony solar system

The other two European debuts are getting a lot less detail from DJI at this stage. The Romo 2 is the second generation of DJI’s robot vacuum, and beyond confirming it’ll be shown at IFA, the company hasn’t published a full spec sheet for Europe yet. Early listings point to dirt type detection that adjusts the cleaning approach depending on what it finds on your floor, along with Matter smart home support, though some of that appears tied to specific models within the range, so treat it as a preview rather than a confirmed feature list.

The energy side is a bit clearer. DJI has been building out its Power range of portable batteries for a couple of years now, and the new balcony solar system extends that into home energy, letting a battery like the Power 2000 take in solar power and, in supported markets, feed excess electricity back to the grid. Whether that setup will be sold or supported in Ireland hasn’t been confirmed, so it’s worth checking DJI’s own specs before assuming it applies here.

The two you can already buy

While those three are new, the Osmo Pocket 4P and Mic Mini 2S have already launched and are sitting on Irish shelves right now, so this is really a chance to try before you buy.

The Osmo Pocket 4P is DJI’s first dual lens pocket gimbal camera, pairing its usual 1 inch wide sensor with a 60mm lens for closer, more flattering portraits without having to physically get closer to whoever you’re filming. It shoots 4K at up to 240 frames a second on the wide lens, claims 17 stops of dynamic range, and adds a new 10-bit D-Log 2 colour profile for anyone planning to grade footage properly afterwards rather than posting straight out of camera. All of that sits in a 230g body with 12x zoom and DJI’s ActiveTrack 8.0 subject tracking. The Standard Combo runs €599, with the Vlog Combo at €689, and it’s available now through DJI’s Osmo Pocket 4P page and Irish retailers.

The Mic Mini 2S is the smaller story but arguably the more useful one for most people. It’s a tiny wireless microphone system with 28 hours of onboard storage and 32-bit float recording built into the transmitter itself, so if your phone or camera connection drops out mid recording, the mic keeps a clean backup anyway. One receiver now handles up to four transmitters at once, useful if you’re recording a panel or a group interview rather than a solo piece to camera. The two-transmitter kit with receiver and charging case is €189, and the single transmitter mobile bundle is €99.

Neither of those two has a confirmed US launch. DJI has been contesting restrictions the US Federal Communications Commission placed on its communications and video equipment as part of a wider crackdown on foreign made drones, and several of its 2026 launches, the Pocket 4P and Mic Mini 2S included, simply haven’t been approved for sale there. Irish and European buyers don’t have that problem, which makes IFA week a genuinely good moment to get hands on with kit that’s already sitting in stock here.

Everything else on the stand

Beyond the new stuff, DJI is bringing its full portfolio to Berlin. The consumer drone lineup includes the Mavic 4 Pro, Air 3S, Mini 5 Pro, Neo 2, Lito 1, Lito X1, Flip, Avata 360 and Inspire 3. The handheld side covers the Osmo Pocket 3 and 4, Osmo Action 6, Osmo Nano, Osmo 360, Mic Mini 2, Ronin 4D, the RS 4 Mini, RS 4 Pro and RS 5, plus DJI’s SDR transmission gear and Focus Pro follow focus system. On the power side, expect the Power 1000 Mini, Power 1000 V2, Power 2000 and the Power Expansion Battery 2000 alongside that new balcony solar setup. There’s also a proper enterprise and agriculture corner, with the Matrice 4E and 4T, the Agras T100 and T70P, and the Mavic 3M.

If you’re planning a trip to Berlin for it, DJI is running four free workshops open to all visitors on the 5th and 6th of September, each lasting half an hour. Drone sessions run at 11am and handheld camera sessions at 3pm both days, with the first three hosted by working creators and the last one led by DJI staff directly.

Shelly’s new smart camera costs €39.90 and doesn’t hold your footage to ransom

Marty
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Shelly’s new smart camera costs €39.90 and doesn’t hold your footage to ransom

I’ll say this for the smart camera market, it’s gotten very good at making you pay twice. You buy the camera, then you get nagged into a monthly fee just to see more than a blurry ten second clip of your own front door. Ring does it, Nest does it, most of them do it. So when a company launches a camera that works properly without a subscription, it gets my attention

Launching at IFA Berlin 2026 is the Shelly Camera, accounced today by Bulgarian smart home firm Shelly Group. It’s a compact indoor camera with Full HD 1080p video, a wide 110 by 70 degree field of view and black and white night vision, aimed at homes, apartments and small businesses. It’ll cost €39.90 in Ireland and it’s set to go on sale soon through Shelly.com and its usual reseller network. It’s also the brand’s first proper camera in years, following on from the old Shelly Eye, so there’s a bit of previous form here rather than a company chancing its arm in a new category.

The subscription bit

You get three ways to use it. Watch the live feed with nothing recorded, pop in a microSD card (not included) for local storage, or pay for Shelly Cloud if you want footage backed up off site. None of those require an ongoing subscription to function, which is the point. Buy the camera, own the camera, use the camera. Shelly does throw in three months of Cloud free so you can try the extras, namely AI object detection that tells people, pets and cars apart, before deciding whether it’s worth paying for afterwards.

It plugs into the rest of your smart home, not just an app

The more interesting bit for anyone already knee deep in smart home gear is that this isn’t a standalone camera bolted onto an app. Motion detection can trigger other Shelly devices directly, switching on a light, firing a relay, kicking off whatever automation you’ve set up, and it does this locally without needing the cloud involved at all. Movement at the front door turning on the hall light before you’ve even got your key out is the kind of thing that’s normally locked behind a subscription tier elsewhere.

It also plays nicely outside the Shelly ecosystem, which matters if you’re the sort who doesn’t like being boxed into one brand. It supports MQTT, WebSocket and WebRTC, and works with Home Assistant (my homelab is already worried), Frigate NVR, Amazon Alexa, Google Home and Samsung SmartThings. For the self hosted crowd, that’s arguably the bigger story than the camera itself.

Where it falls short

I won’t pretend 1080p is exciting in 2026. Rivals like Wyze have had 2K cameras on shelves for less money, so Shelly is behind on raw resolution even if the field of view and night vision hold their own. There’s also a built in microphone and speaker for two way audio, handy for shouting at a delivery driver or checking in on a pet, and it’s powered over USB-C with a two metre cable and mounting plate in the box, so at least there’s no proprietary charging faff to deal with.

Shelly Camera is available in black or white with a two year warranty, and is listed now on the Shelly site ahead of wider stock landing soon.

Dyson’s new CameraJet toothbrush has a camera and a jet built in coming to Ireland

Marty
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Dyson’s new CameraJet toothbrush has a camera and a jet built in coming to Ireland

A few years back I had one of those smart Oral-B toothbrushes, the one that paired with an app and popped up a little quadrant map on your bathroom mirror telling you which bit of your mouth you were meant to be scrubbing and for how long. I found it useful, not because the toothbrush itself was doing anything clever, but because it showed me, in real time, that I did not brush my teeth for anywhere near the two minutes dentists keep telling us to. I bring that up because Dyson has just launched a toothbrush that makes that old Oral-B look almost restrained.

The Dyson CameraJet launched today in Paris, and it is a very descriptive name to say the least. It is an electric toothbrush with a tiny built-in camera that watches your teeth as you brush, spots the gaps between them using machine learning, and fires a precision jet of mouthrinse into those gaps to floss them while you go. Dyson calls the whole package the Dyson Dental System, and the set, toothbrush, charging dock, travel case, toothpaste and mouthrinse, costs €479.99, available now in Ceramic Ultra Blue or Ceramic Pink.

You can’t take your eyes off Dyson. Every time you think they’ve settled into vacuums, hairdryers and fans, they turn around with something like a wearable air purifier disguised as headphones, and now a toothbrush that’s basically a dental endoscope with a water jet bolted on. This one, though, is aimed at a genuine problem rather than a gimmick, so it’s worth picking apart what it actually does and what it costs before writing it off as another mad Dyson idea.

What the camera and jet actually do?

The camera is a 100k pixel macro lens mounted right under the brush head, running what Dyson calls Gap Optical Targeting. It scans 28 images a second while you brush, tracking and predicting where the gaps between your teeth are, and within about 100 milliseconds of spotting one it fires a small conical burst of mouthrinse into it.

Dyson’s argument is that most water flossers use a needle-type jet that pierces plaque without shifting it, while a broader conical spray sweeps it away at lower pressure, which is gentler on gums in the process. The reservoir uses what Dyson calls an anti-gravity tank, essentially a pump system designed to keep firing properly even when the brush is held sideways or upside down, which matters more than it sounds once you’re trying to reach your back teeth.

The bit that gives this merit

The World Health Organization estimates that oral diseases affect nearly 3.7 billion people worldwide, which is a genuinely startling number for something so preventable. Dyson also points to its own research from 2017 showing that most people don’t floss as often as they should, and that average brushing time comes in around 45 seconds, well short of the two minutes recommended. That tracks with my own Oral-B experience completely.

I thought I was doing a reasonable job until a toothbrush told me otherwise, and I’d wager most people are in the same boat. There’s also a growing body of research linking poor gum health to broader issues like heart disease and cognitive decline, though that’s a correlation worth treating carefully rather than a reason to panic-buy a toothbrush. WHO

What it costs and what’s in the box?

In Ireland you’re looking at €479.99 for the full Dyson Dental System, which lines up with the UK price of £419.99 and the US price of $499 that other outlets are reporting today. Dyson has never shied away from charging a premium.

For that you get the CameraJet toothbrush itself, a charging dock that refills the reservoir in three seconds, a travel case, and Dyson’s own non-foaming toothpaste and mouthrinse in your choice of Ginger Mint or Spearmint, with a Peppermint Sensitive toothpaste variant for sensitive teeth.

There are a few concerns I have here. Dyson has made this non-foaming toothpaste themselves and I fear it’ll be both hrd to get and probably pricey. Also, the brush heads are RFID-tagged and proprietary, and the toothpaste and mouthrinse are Dyson’s own formulations too, so this is very much an ecosystem purchase with ongoing costs attached, not a one-off spend. But if that first price didn’t bother you, neither will most of this news.

The TL;DR

I haven’t had one of these in my hand yet, so this isn’t a review and I’m not going to pretend it is one. What I will say is that the problem Dyson is going after here is real and i generally like Dyson engineered products. Most of us genuinely don’t floss enough or brush for long enough, and I know that from my own experience, not just from a press release telling me so. Whether a €479.99 toothbrush with a camera in it is the right way to fix that is a different question entirely, and one I want to actually test rather than guess at. Early hands-on impressions are already starting to appear from outlets who got units ahead of launch, so a proper Goosed review is on the list. For now, the Dyson CameraJet is available today in Dyson’s own stores and through selected retailers, priced at €479.99.

Revolut’s AI assistant AIR has landed in Ireland just in time for me

Marty
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Revolut’s AI assistant AIR has landed in Ireland just in time for me

Timing is everything. I’m in the middle of a big budgeting overhaul at the minute. Slighly tired of seeing more money going out monthly than is coming in. Conveniently, today Revolut has launched AIR, short for AI by Revolut. This is a chat based assistant built into the Revolut app that you can ask things like how much you spent on groceries last month, how a particular stock in your portfolio is doing, or what subscriptions are quietly draining your account. You open it by swiping down from the middle of your home screen, or by going into Profile, then Chats, then AIR.

What AIR does

AIR is a search bar for your own financial data. You can ask it for a breakdown of your spending in a given month or category, get a quick update on how your investments are performing, see what subscriptions you’re paying for and cancel the ones you forgot about, or freeze a lost card without hunting for the right menu.

It also handles travel planning, so you can describe the kind of trip you want and it’ll suggest options, and it lets you redeem RevPoints directly for things like eSIMs or lounge passes instead of clicking through several screens to find the redemption page.

Revolut already has a dedicated budgeting and spending tracker in the app (Revolut’s existing budget planner) that does most of this visually. Personally, I’ve struggled to get that setup with start dates of months never aligning to salary and that kind of thing.

What AIR changes is the interface. Instead of tapping into three or four different sections to piece together a picture of your month, you just ask the question directly. This is potentially a more user friendly way to budget with your bank.T

What about your data?

AI and your financial data can be a jarring sentence, even if I’ve been lobbing statements into Claude myself. Revolut says AIR runs under a zero data retention policy, meaning the third party AI partners powering it don’t store your information or use it to train their own models.

That said, a policy is a claim, not an independent audit. The same way Google’s DNS policies are laid out that I recently researched for Vodafone’s outage over the weekend.

The key point here is that Revolut Bank operates under a Lithuanian banking licence but remains subject to the Central Bank of Ireland’s consumer protection rules for customers here. Generally speaking, it can feel uneasy seeing banks pushing technical boundaries in Ireland given our banks have been playing it safe for years.

Will it actually help you budget?

Given where I’m at with my own finances right now, this is the bit I care about most. My plan is to actually use AIR for the boring, specific questions I’d normally answer by scrolling back through statements, things like what I spent on takeaways this month or whether a subscription I forgot about is still coming out. Or simply asking where am I bleeding money this money or if I’m forecasting to hit my targets and if not, what can we swing.

If it saves me the five minutes of digging every time, that’s a genuine win, even if the underlying data was always sitting there in the budget planner anyway.

What it won’t do is force better habits on you. Asking an AI assistant how much you spent on coffee doesn’t stop you spending it. The value here is speed of information, not willpower, and it’s worth being honest with yourself about which one you’re actually short on.

The tl;dr

AIR is a sensible, low risk addition if you’re already banking with Revolut, and a handy way to get quick answers without wading through menus. It’s not a reason to switch banks on its own, and it’s not the financial breakthrough the announcement makes it sound like, but it is another view of what banking of tomorrow could be. If you’re a Revolut customer in Ireland, you can start using it now for free by swiping down from your home screen or heading to Profile, then Chats, then AIR.

Stranded Deep 2 is real, and it’s ditching the islands for a desert river

Marty
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Stranded Deep 2 is real, and it’s ditching the islands for a desert river

Stranded Deep ate an embarrassing number of hours of my life. Slapping together a driftwood shack, rigging up a way to find or build fresh water because necking seawater is a lesson you only need once. Rationing coconuts so you’re not doubled over from eating too many, and fending off whatever local wildlife had taken a dislike to me, all while island hopping across an endless ocean map. It’s one of the most quietly addictive survival games going, and I’ve been waiting years for a proper follow up.

That follow up has now landed, sort of. North Beach Games Prague, the studio built specifically to make this game, has put out the first proper reveal trailer for Stranded Deep 2, and the headline change is a big one. Rather than another chain of tropical islands, the sequel drops you into a desert wilderness built around a single, apparently endless river. It’s being led by Sam Edwards, the original Stranded Deep co-creator, and it’s heading to Steam Early Access in early 2027, with console versions to follow later.

I like the boldness of it. I’ve also got questions.

The islands are gone, and now it’s all about the river

The core setting has completely flipped. Instead of scavenging your way across scattered ocean islands, you’re now stuck alone in a harsh desert with one long river as your lifeline for travel, water and resources. Early footage shows river journeys through canyons and dunes, underwater exploration, and run ins with crocodiles and hippos rather than the sharks and boars of the original. You’ll reportedly be able to dig into the terrain to reshape it or redirect the river itself, which is a proper change from passively reacting to an island’s layout and actually having a say in how the world around you looks.

What’s actually sticking around?

The bones of the game are still there. It’s the same scavenge, craft, build and survive loop that made the original work, just applied to a new environment. One genuinely interesting addition is a floating home you can build, which sounds like a much more mobile take on base building than four walls nailed to a beach. The world is procedurally generated so it keeps going as long as you keep travelling, but hand crafted locations are scattered through it with better materials, rare items and bits of world history to find. The Cartographer editor is getting a revamp too, letting players build and share their own areas, and mod support has been confirmed.

Is this a direct sequel to the story?

No. North Beach Games has been upfront that Stranded Deep 2 doesn’t follow on from the events of the first game. It’s a new survival adventure in its own right, though the developer has hinted there’ll be a few nods to the original for anyone paying attention.

Stranded Deep 2 launches into Steam Early Access on PC in early 2027, with console versions planned for later without a confirmed date or platform list yet. If you’re hoping to run it on whatever’s gathering dust under the telly, bad news. The stated minimum spec is Windows 11, an Intel Core i5-11400 or AMD Ryzen 5 3600X, 16GB of RAM, an SSD, and a graphics card around an RTX 2060 Super or RX 6600 level. That’s a proper mid range gaming PC, not the sort of machine the low spec original was famous for running on. Controller support is planned to arrive during Early Access, and the team says it’s aiming for Steam Deck Verified status, which is promising if you fancy island hopping, sorry, river rafting, on the go.

Multiplayer is confirmed, but the details are thin

The developer has said multiplayer is being built in from the start rather than bolted on later, which is a smart lesson learned from the original. Beyond that confirmation, there’s nothing yet on player counts, cross play, or whether co op lands with the initial Early Access release or turns up further down the line.

My early thoughts are that this is a genuinely bold reinvention rather than a safe retread, and that’s exactly what a game this far removed from its 2015 original probably needed. Swapping tropical islands for a desert river changes the entire rhythm of play, from how you navigate to what’s trying to eat you, and the floating home idea alone has me curious. It’s welcome given I moved onto Subnautica after this but preferred life above water being honest.

That said, it’s very early days. There’s no gameplay demo yet, no confirmed console dates, and multiplayer is still a promise rather than a shown feature, so plenty of this could still shift before Early Access. If you want to see it for yourself, the reveal trailer and screenshots are up on the official Stranded Deep 2 site, and the original game that started all this is still available on the Stranded Deep Steam page if you want a refresher before the sequel lands.

Watch Stranded Deep 2 trailer

Vodafone broadband outage: This sucks but you can get yourself back online

Marty
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Vodafone broadband outage: This sucks but you can get yourself back online

Ah Vodafone. Come on now. Could you have picked a worse time to have an utter mare with your DNS. It’s raining. It’s the weekend. The last weekend before many kids go back to school. Noone wanted increased stress now, of all times.

Fortunately, while this whole thing sucks, you can actually fix this yourself with a relatively quick settings update on your home router and get youself back online.

Fix the Vodafone broadband outage yourself and get back online

I’ve alluded to the issue being the DNS. We can go into the detail of what that is, or we can get you back online. Really we’ll do both, but lets get you back online first.

I’m assuming you have the Vodafone Gigabox (see the picture above).

Fixing your Vodafone home broadband

  1. Connect a laptop, phone or PC to your Vodafone Wi-Fi, or plug in with an Ethernet cable if you can.
  2. Open a browser and go to 192.168.1.1.
  3. Log in using the details on the sticker underneath the router. If it’s never been changed, the password is often just “vodafone”.
  4. Switch from Basic Mode to Expert Mode, if the option’s there.
  5. Go to Internet, then DNS (sometimes labelled DNS & DDNS).
  6. Change the allocation from Automatic to Manual.
  7. Enter 8.8.8.8 as the primary DNS and 8.8.4.4 as the secondary. Cloudflare’s 1.1.1.1 and 1.0.0.1 work just as well and keep marginally less of your browsing history sitting on someone else’s server, if that matters to you.
  8. Apply or save the change.
  9. Give it a minute, then restart the router once. Don’t keep mashing the reset button; that just wipes settings you’ll have to redo.

Reconnect your devices and that’s the whole job done.

If DNS doesn’t sort it

A few things worth checking before you write the fix off. Look at the fibre box on the wall rather than the router itself: a solid red light there points to an actual line fault, and no amount of DNS fiddling touches that. Try a second device before assuming the whole thing failed, since it’s common for one phone to hang onto the old settings after the router’s already fixed.

If you need to get something done right now, your phone’s own mobile data will get you online in the meantime. And if none of that shifts it, the honest answer is that you’re waiting on Vodafone, not on yourself, so ring them or keep an eye on vodafone.ie/service-updates, bearing in mind that page has a habit of lagging behind what customers are actually seeing.

Is changing your DNS actually safe?

Yes. I know this sounds like some Hackers Matrix stuff but it’s not an issue and actually somewhat recommended. It doesn’t touch your contract, your bill, or anything Vodafone can hold against you, and you can undo it in the same menu by switching the setting back to Automatic once the issue’s fixed.

The only real trade-off is that your DNS lookups, essentially which website you’re asking to visit, now run through Google or Cloudflare’s servers instead of Vodafone’s. That’s less a step down in privacy than a change of who’s doing the looking, since your ISP was seeing the exact same requests before you touched anything.

What’s gone wrong with Vodafone’s DNS?

Well, Vodafone’s status page says everything is grand and have you believe there’s not an issue in the world. But the lived experience by Vodafone customers today says otherwise. Just look at that Downdetector spike!

That gap between what a company’s own tracker says and what its customers are actually shouting about online is one of my favourite things to cover.

DNS is the system that turns a web address like goosed.ie into the numbers a browser actually needs to find it. When an ISP’s own DNS servers choke, your connection stays up but becomes functionally useless. Like driving around without Google Maps or even one of those wee atlas’s your parents might have had.

The workaround plenty of them say fixed it in minutes is pointing your router at a different DNS service instead of Vodafone’s own. It’s not a repair, and it won’t help everyone, but if your box shows a connection and nothing else is working, it’s worth the two minutes before you try anything else.

To be upfront, I haven’t been able to independently confirm the scale of this from Vodafone directly. Its own service status page currently shows no known issues, which either means it’s already sorted for most people, or that DNS problems just don’t tend to register on official trackers the way a full network outage does. Either way, the fix below costs nothing and takes two minutes, so it’s worth trying regardless of what that page tells you.

The Goosed verdict

If your Vodafone broadband looks connected but nothing’s loading, try the DNS swap before you do anything else. It costs nothing, takes two minutes, and by every account going round at the moment, it’s getting a lot of people back online while Vodafone sorts out whatever’s actually broken on its end. Just don’t mistake it for a fix. It’s a detour around the problem, not a repair of it, and if your line genuinely has an issue, changing a couple of numbers in a router menu was never going to touch that. Keep an eye on Vodafone’s status page for the real update: vodafone.ie/service-updates.

This piece is based on user reports and community threads rather than an official statement from Vodafone. Router menus, default logins, and exact wording can vary slightly by model and firmware, so yours might not match exactly. If in doubt, contact Vodafone support before making changes.

A few quick answers

Is Vodafone actually down right now?

Its own status page may say no even when plenty of customers are reporting otherwise, so check both that page and a live thread like r/ireland before assuming it’s just you.

Will this affect my contract or bill?

No. Changing your router’s DNS settings is free, reversible, and has nothing to do with your service agreement.

What if only one device in the house is affected?

Set the same DNS numbers directly on that device, or forget the Wi-Fi network and rejoin it, rather than assuming the fix has failed.

How do I switch back once it’s fixed?

Go back into the same DNS menu and flip the setting from Manual back to Automatic.




Samsung’s Galaxy S26 FE arrives in Ireland with a familiar spec sheet and a higher price

Marty
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Samsung’s Galaxy S26 FE arrives in Ireland with a familiar spec sheet and a higher price

I’ve covered enough of Samsung’s Fan Edition launches at this stage to know the drill. Take the flagship formula, trim it down, price it below the main S line, and hope people don’t look too closely at what got cut. This year’s version, the Galaxy S26 FE, follows that pattern closely, and it lands with a price bump that’s worth talking about before anything else.

Samsung has confirmed the Galaxy S26 FE for Ireland with pricing starting at €799 for the 128GB model, rising to €899 for 256GB and €1,099 for the 512GB version. It goes on sale on 4 September in three colours, Blueberry, Graphite and Pistachio. It’s the first Galaxy phone to ship with One UI 9 on Android 17 straight out of the box, and it pairs an Exynos 2500 chip with 8GB of RAM, a 6.7 inch 120Hz display and a 4,900mAh battery. I haven’t had a unit in to test, so this is a straight look at what Samsung has announced rather than a verdict on how it holds up day to day, but the specs and pricing tell a fairly clear story on their own.

That story is essentially this. It’s last year’s phone with a new chip and a fresh coat of software, at a higher price than before. That’s not automatically a bad thing, but it does change who it’s actually a good deal for.

What’s new on the Galaxy S26 FE?

Honestly, not a huge amount on the hardware side. The move from the Galaxy S25 FE’s Exynos 2400 to the Exynos 2500 is the main change under the bonnet, and the battery, display size and refresh rate all carry over unchanged. Where Samsung has actually put the work in is software. A growing trend amid hardware cost challenges worldwide. One UI 9 lands here before it reaches most of last year’s Galaxy phones, and it brings a handful of camera and AI features down from the more expensive end of the range.

The camera and Galaxy AI features worth knowing about

My FanCam, which first turned up on Samsung’s foldables, tracks a person through a video and keeps them framed without any manual editing, handy for anyone filming a kid’s match or a mate mid disaster on a night out. Super Steady with Horizontal Lock helps keep footage level when you’re shooting on the move. Photo Assist lets you edit photos with a written prompt rather than fiddling with sliders, and Gemini Omni turns existing photos and clips into a short edited video automatically, though that one needs an eligible Google AI Pro account, which Samsung is throwing in free for six months. Circle to Search now handles more than one item in a shot at once, so you can identify a few things in the same photo rather than searching one at a time. None of this is revolutionary, but it’s a reasonable step up from what the S25 FE shipped with.

Galaxy S26 FE price and availability in Ireland

Here’s the bit that’ll actually decide whether this makes sense for most people. The Galaxy S26 FE costs €50 more than the Galaxy S25 FE did at launch on the base 128GB model, €90 more on the 256GB tier and a fairly steep €170 more if you want the 512GB version. That’s not a small jump for a phone with mostly the same internals as before.

That said, it’s worth putting the price rise in context. The standard Galaxy S26 starts at €999 for 256GB, so even at €899 for the same storage, the FE still undercuts the full flagship by €100. If your budget genuinely stops below a grand and you want Samsung’s newest AI features and software support, it’s still the cheaper route into that world, just a less generous one than it was twelve months ago.

Is 8GB of RAM going to hold up

This is the part I’d actually think twice about. The Galaxy S26 FE ships with 8GB of RAM, the same as its predecessor, while the rest of the Galaxy S26 family runs 12GB. Samsung is promising seven years of security updates and seven generations of OS upgrades on this phone, which is a genuinely long commitment. Galaxy AI features tend to get hungrier for memory with every update, not leaner, so there’s a reasonable question over how comfortably this phone will be running whatever Samsung’s AI stack looks like in year five or six. It’s not a dealbreaker today, but it’s the trade-off Samsung has made to hit this price point, and it’s fair to go in with your eyes open about it.

The Goosed verdict

I don’t think this is a bad phone, but I do think Samsung is asking Irish buyers to pay more for standing still. The chip is newer, the software is genuinely a step ahead of what’s currently on most Galaxy phones, and it’s still meaningfully cheaper than the standard Galaxy S26. But if you already own an S25 FE, there’s very little reason to move, and the RAM situation means I wouldn’t go in expecting this to feel current for the full seven years Samsung is promising. It’s a sensible pick up for someone jumping from an older phone who wants the latest Samsung software without flagship pricing, less so for anyone chasing longevity or hoping for a proper generational leap. The Galaxy S26 FE launches in Ireland on 4 September from €799, full details in Samsung’s official announcement.

The best eSIM for Ireland is Three, just not the one they sell tourists

Marty
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The best eSIM for Ireland is Three, just not the one they sell tourists

I’ve had a SIM from every network operating in this country at some point, some by choice, some because a phone came locked to it and I couldn’t be bothered switching. So when someone visiting Ireland asks me what to sort before they land, I’ve usually got an actual answer.

When people ask what the best eSIM for Ireland is, there are really only two paths. You either buy a data eSIM from a company like Airalo, or an Airalo alternative before you fly, which runs on one of the local networks, or you buy directly from an Irish network once you’re here, as an eSIM or a physical SIM card. Airalo plans for Ireland run from around a fiver for a week of a few gigs up to about €25 for a month of unlimited data. Buying direct from an Irish network costs roughly the same, sometimes less, and that’s where this gets interesting.

Three is the network you want to be on. That bit isn’t controversial. What’s worth flagging is that the specific SIM Three markets at tourists doesn’t do what its own website implies, and the plan that actually gives you proper EU roaming is one nobody’s pointing visitors towards.

Why Three has the edge

Three was named Ireland’s best network by Opensignal in 2025, and it wasn’t close. Opensignal, which measures real user data rather than marketing claims, gave Three the wins for fastest network, fastest 5G, most reliable, and best overall quality, based on three months of actual usage data.

To be fair to the competition, eir picked up the win for 5G coverage and availability in Opensignal’s most recent report, covering the period up to January 2026. So if you’re heading somewhere remote where getting a 5G signal at all matters more than how fast that signal is, eir’s a genuine shout. For a normal visit hitting Dublin, Galway, Cork and the main tourist trail, Three’s speed and consistency win out, and that lines up with what I’ve seen using it myself.

Three’s tourist eSIM for Ireland has a catch

Three sells a dedicated tourist SIM called Visit Ireland, €15 for 5GB over 7 days or €25 for 25GB over 28 days, with instant eSIM setup. The product listing on Three’s own site says the data covers Ireland and EU. Scroll down to the terms and conditions on that same page and it says the opposite: the allowance is for use only in the Republic of Ireland.

That’s not a small print nuance, that’s a plan contradicting itself on its own product page. Buy Visit Ireland expecting it to keep working once you fly to Paris or drive north into Belfast, and you’ll find out the hard way that it doesn’t.

Buy the regular prepay SIM instead

Skip Visit Ireland and buy Three’s ordinary prepay SIM instead, specifically Connect Complete. It costs €25, tops up every 28 days, and gets you:

  • Unlimited data in Ireland
  • 37GB of genuine EU roaming data
  • Unlimited minutes and 3,000 texts
  • 5G included

That 37GB is a real, separate allowance with its own fair use policy, not a marketing line the small print quietly cancels. So why is nobody telling tourists about it? Probably because it’s not sold as a tourist product, so it never turns up in the usual SIM comparison round-ups. There’s nothing stopping a visitor buying it all the same. You’ll need a passport to register it, same as any prepay SIM in Ireland, and you’re better off buying it in a Three store or at the airport rather than trying to sort it from home, since it isn’t built for the order-online-before-you-land experience that Visit Ireland is.

One correction to my own assumption before this went out. I’d assumed Connect Complete might be physical SIM only, which would be a real headache for anyone with a US iPhone from the 14 onwards, since Apple dropped the physical SIM tray on those entirely. Turns out that’s not the case. Three’s had eSIM available across its prepay range since late 2023, Connect Complete included, you’ll just need to ask for it specifically in store rather than expecting the instant online activation Visit Ireland offers.

If you want the same network for less and don’t need the minutes, 48 is Three’s own budget prepay brand running on identical infrastructure, from around €13 a month. GoMo, eir’s equivalent, is bill pay only, so that one’s out no matter how good the price looks if you’re only here for a week.

Airalo is the easiest eSIM for Ireland if you skip the shop

Airalo is still the better call if convenience matters more to you than squeezing out every gigabyte. It partners directly with Three and eir for coverage, so you get the same network without a passport, a shop queue, or a confused sales assistant. It’s consistently the most recommended eSIM across r/irishtourism, and that tracks with what I’d expect given how it’s set up.

The trade-off is that some travellers on those threads found the data allowances stingier and the price per gigabyte higher than a local SIM gives you. If you’re staying more than a week or two, the maths starts favouring Connect Complete instead.

Don’t assume it works once you cross into the north

Do not take it for granted that your Irish eSIM or SIM keeps working once you cross into Northern Ireland, because plenty of the marketing claims about this floating around online don’t hold up. A good few of the generic “best eSIM for Ireland” articles out there claim their plans include UK roaming as standard, stated flatly with no source.

From personal experience I know Three will generally work without issue, across the UK and wider EU – which makes sense given the Common Travel Area, but current documentation just doesn’t spell it out for data. If a day trip north of the border is part of your plan, you should be grand, but I always recommend you download Google Maps data for the area you are visiting.

The Goosed verdict

If you’d rather everything just worked the second the plane door opens, get Airalo, you’ll be grand. If you’re staying more than a few days and want your data to survive a trip outside Ireland too, walk into a Three shop, ask for Connect Complete, and ignore the tourist SIM in the window. It’s not lying to you exactly, but it’s not telling you the whole truth either.

Connect Complete costs €25 for 28 days of unlimited Irish data and 37GB of EU roaming, available in any Three store or at Dublin Airport with a passport.

Frequently asked questions

Does Three’s tourist eSIM work in the UK or EU?

No. Despite the “Ireland and EU” description on Three’s own website, the terms and conditions for the Visit Ireland tourist plans state the data allowance is for use in the Republic of Ireland only.

Do I need ID to buy a SIM card in Ireland?

Yes, a passport, for any prepay SIM from Three, Vodafone or eir, tourist-specific or not.

Which Irish network has the best coverage?

Three was named Ireland’s best network overall by Opensignal in 2025 for speed, reliability and quality. eir has since taken the lead specifically for 5G coverage extent, so it depends on whether raw speed or reach matters more to you.

Is Airalo or a local Irish SIM better for a visit?

Airalo wins on convenience since it’s set up before you land and needs no ID. A local prepay SIM like Three’s Connect Complete usually wins on value and genuine EU roaming if you’re staying more than a few days.





Standard PS5 will run GTA VI at 30fps: The case for PS5 Pro crumbles

Marty
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Standard PS5 will run GTA VI at 30fps: The case for PS5 Pro crumbles

Yesterday I sat down with the GTA VI Extended Look and had to leave one big question hanging in my honest take on the extended gameplay reveal, because Rockstar simply hadn’t answered it. Today, someone else asked it for me, in a room with Rockstar North’s own development lead, and got about as real an answer as anyone’s going to get before an official spec sheet lands.

During the same Rockstar North visit that produced this week’s Extended Look, Brazilian creator Davy Jones put the frame rate question directly to Rob Nelson, the studio’s head of development and co-director. Nelson ran the game live in front of him with an on screen counter visible, and every console version on show was ticking along at 30fps. He stopped short of calling that final, and said he’d need to check with the technical team before confirming whether a 60fps option is coming at launch or further down the line.

The quick version. GTA 6 is currently running at 30fps on every console during this stage of development, according to Rockstar North’s own development lead. There’s no confirmation of a 60fps mode at launch, on any console including PS5 Pro, and no word yet on resolution or ray tracing either. Treat it as the current reality rather than a locked-in promise.

So that’s where things stand today. Not the disaster some headlines are painting it as, and not the disappointment plenty of gamers online are giving out about either, just Rockstar being cagey about a number it clearly hasn’t finalised. Let’s get into what was actually said and what it means.

What Rob Nelson actually said

Nelson didn’t dodge the question, but he didn’t hand out a locked specification either. Asked directly whether GTA 6 would run at 30 or 60fps, including on PS5 Pro, he told Jones that during this development period every console is running the game at 30fps, and that he isn’t the technical person who can commit to anything beyond that. Kotaku’s write-up of the exchange makes clear he genuinely seemed enthusiastic about how 30fps was looking, rather than apologetic about it, which is a small but telling detail. He also said he didn’t have details on resolution or ray tracing to share yet.

Davy Jones, the presenter behind the GameplayRJ channel and a co-founder of Flow Games, a well established Brazilian games outlet, and reports on the Rockstar North preview describe him as the only Brazilian creator invited out to the studio in Edinburgh for it. That access makes him a credible source. It doesn’t make him a Rockstar spokesperson, and it doesn’t make Nelson’s comment on a demo floor the same thing as an official technical brief.

Why I wouldn’t call this officially confirmed

A fair few headlines today are using the word confirmed, and I’d be careful with that. What actually happened is a developer answered a direct question honestly, on the record, while running a build in front of a journalist. That’s genuinely useful and interesting, but it describes where the game is now during development, not a locked launch specification. Rockstar itself hasn’t published anything on performance modes, and Nelson’s own answer left the door open on 60fps rather than shutting it.

Being totally transparent, my own money is on 30fps being close to the final answer for base PS5 and Xbox Series X and S. But there’s a difference between my prediction and Rockstar’s confirmation.

This would be very on brand for Rockstar

If 30fps does end up being the launch reality, it wouldn’t be out of character. GTA V launched at 30fps on PS4 and Xbox One and didn’t get a 60fps mode until the PS5 and Xbox Series X upgrade years later, and Red Dead Redemption 2 still has no official 60fps mode on current consoles at all. Rockstar has consistently chosen density and visual ambition over a higher frame rate, and Kotaku’s coverage draws the same comparison.

What that actually means for you sitting on the couch is worth spelling out rather than just quoting a number. Thirty frames a second looks perfectly smooth in cutscenes and slower walking sections, but it costs you responsiveness the moment things get fast. Camera whip pans during a shootout, snapping the reticule onto a moving target, the way a car reacts the instant you touch the brakes at speed, all of that feels noticeably softer at 30fps than at 60. It’s not broken, GTA V and RDR2 both proved that, but anyone coming from a 60fps shooter or racer is going to feel the difference in the first ten minutes.

What about the PS5 Pro?

Nelson’s comment covered every console equally, PS5 Pro included, which will hurt for anyone who paid the premium expecting an easy 60fps mode. There’s no official word on a Pro-specific performance mode, and I flagged the same doubt in my earlier look at the GTA VI pre-order questions, where some of the sharpest hardware analysts weren’t convinced a locked 60fps was a given even on the Pro. A middle ground of 40fps for 120Hz televisions is the sort of compromise Rockstar could realistically land on, but that’s speculation on my part, not anything Nelson or Rockstar have said.

Will GTA 6 get a 60fps mode?

Not confirmed either way. Nelson said the technical team would need to weigh in before Rockstar can commit to a 60fps option at launch or afterwards, and history suggests if it does arrive, it’s more likely to land as a later upgrade than a day one feature. Will the 30fps target apply to PC? No, because there’s still no confirmed PC version at all. Whenever a PC port does arrive, it’ll carry its own separate performance profile built around a much wider range of hardware, the same way GTA V’s PC release eventually did.

Now there is rumoured to be a very advanced PC-version of the game to be in Rockstar, making me feel like I won’t have to wait too far past launch day to get hands on with that. But I’ll have bought GTA VI already for PS5 at that stage.

The Goosed verdict

I’m not losing sleep over this, and I don’t think you should either. Rockstar has built its last two open worlds around scale and detail rather than frame rate, and everything about GTA 6 so far, the density of Leonida, the physics, the interactivity, points at the studio making the same trade again. Treat 30fps as the expectation, not the disappointment, and if a 60fps mode does show up before or after launch, take it as a bonus rather than something you were owed. What I’d genuinely like next is Rockstar putting its name to an actual technical breakdown before 19 November, because a demo floor comment from a developer, however honest, isn’t a substitute for that. You can catch up on the pricing and pre-order details in everything else I worked out ahead of the GTA VI pre-order.

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