New Leel Music service will combine curated, age-appropriate listening with parental controls and specialist music technology – Tuned Global, the AI-powered Music Cloud Platform for businesses building licensed music experiences, has partnered with Leel Phone to support Leel Music, a safe music streaming service developed for Leel Phone’s child-first smartphone ecosystem.

The partnership reflects a rapidly emerging shift in children’s technology, as device manufacturers move beyond simply making smartphones safer and begin building holistic digital ecosystems that combine communication, entertainment and education within environments parents can trust.

Music has become an increasingly important part of that equation. Yet unlike mainstream streaming services designed primarily for adults, children’s platforms require music experiences that are carefully curated, age-appropriate and territory-aware, with infrastructure that gives platform owners greater control and safeguards over content and user experience.

Building music into a child-first digital ecosystem

Leel Music has been designed specifically for a closed ecosystem where parents remain in control and children access entertainment within clearly defined safety parameters. Leel Phone is building music directly into its own protected ecosystem, alongside safe communication, parental controls, age-appropriate video and games.

To support this vision, Tuned Global is providing the white-label music applications, content management system (CMS), APIs, metadata services, explicit-content controls and rights-aware infrastructure that enable Leel Phone to build and manage Leel Music as part of its broader ecosystem.

Tuned Global’s platform provides the underlying technology needed to manage catalogue operations, territory-aware content availability, metadata, integrations and editorial workflows, while also supporting explicit-content controls that assist Leel Phone during playlist creation and content management.

Leel Phone remains responsible for music licensing and editorial curation, with Tuned Global supplying the technology platform that enables the service to operate efficiently across multiple territories.

A curated alternative to mainstream streaming

The initial phase of Leel Music is expected to offer a playlist-driven listening experience, allowing children to enjoy curated music collections while giving Leel Phone editorial control over content selection and user experience.

Leel Music is expected to give children access to a broad licensed music catalogue through carefully curated playlists designed for a family-friendly listening experience, with content selected and managed by Leel Phone for its audience.

Tuned Global Founder and Managing Director Con Raso said the partnership not only strengthens Tuned Global’s position as a leader in integrating licensed music into specialist digital products, but highlights an important evolution in how children’s technology companies are approaching digital entertainment.

“Kids’ technology companies are no longer simply building safer devices. They’re building complete digital ecosystems that children genuinely want to use and parents can confidently trust.

“Music is an incredibly powerful part of childhood, but delivering it responsibly requires much more than adding a streaming player. Providers need the right licensing model, content management capabilities, metadata, editorial controls and rights-aware infrastructure from day one.

“We’re proud to support Leel Phone with our Music Cloud Platform as it brings a safe, curated music experience into its child-first ecosystem and shows what’s possible when safety, technology and entertainment are designed together.”

Giving parents greater control over digital entertainment

Natalie Antoshchuk, Chief Marketing Officer at Leel Phone, said the partnership demonstrates how specialised music infrastructure can help emerging digital platforms deliver richer entertainment experiences while maintaining the safety, control and trust expected by parents.

“Music is an important part of the experience we want to create for children, but it has to meet the same standards of safety and trust as every other part of the Leel ecosystem.

“We chose Tuned Global because they understand the unique requirements of building music experiences for children, from catalogue management and content controls through to scalable music infrastructure. The partnership was a natural extension of our company’s vision for a safer digital experience for children.

“Their Music Cloud Platform gives us the flexibility to introduce Leel Music in a carefully curated way today, while creating a future-proof foundation for our music experience to continue evolving as the Leel ecosystem grows.”

Leel Music set for Q4 2026 launch

Leel Music is expected to launch in Q4 2026, with initial priority markets including the United States, United Kingdom, France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

The partnership follows Tuned Global’s continued investment in its EMEA presence, including the appointment of Mario Forsyth as VP Head of Commercial EMEA earlier this year to support companies across the region building licensed music and audio experiences.

To find out more, visit leelphone.com.

About Leel Phone

Leel is a safe smartphone ecosystem designed for children aged 5–12, built by Trackimo. It is available both as a dedicated Leel Phone and as a downloadable ecosystem for any Android device – meaning parents can turn an existing smartphone into a fully protected kids’ phone without purchasing new hardware. Safety is enforced at the network level (via Leel SIM), meaning controls cannot be bypassed by manipulation and tweaking of the software and settings.

The ecosystem includes: Leel Chat (a standalone safe communication app for kids, available on the App Store and Google Play), Leel Parent (the caregiver control app), Leel TV (age-appropriate video), Leel Music, Leel Games (educational, offline, zero violence), and accessories including Leel Watch, Leel Loc8 (GPS tracker), and Leel Tab. All features operate within a closed-garden environment – no internet browsing, no social media, no access to third-party app stores.

About Tuned Global

Tuned Global is the data-driven Music Cloud Platform that empowers businesses to integrate commercial music into their apps and launch complete streaming experiences using advanced APIs, real-time analytics, licensing solutions, rights management systems, AI-enabled music discovery, and customisable white-label streaming apps.

Our turnkey solutions for music, audio, and video – coupled with advanced AI capabilities and a broad ecosystem of third-party music tech integrations – make us the most comprehensive platform for powering any digital music project.

We streamline complexities in licensing, rights management, and content delivery, enabling rapid innovation and bringing new ideas to life. Since 2011, we’ve supported 40+ companies in 70+ countries – across telecom, gaming, fitness, health, media, aviation, and more – to deliver innovative music experiences faster and more cost-effectively.

Every startup founder obsesses over the product. The pitch deck gets twenty revisions. The logo goes through three designers. The website copy gets A/B tested into oblivion. Then someone says “we should probably get some business cards” or “let’s order hoodies for the team,” and suddenly branding decisions that took months elsewhere get made in an afternoon, off the side of someone’s desk, usually the night before a demo day or a trade show booth.

That gap — between how carefully founders build their digital identity and how carelessly they treat their physical one — is where a lot of small Australian tech startups quietly undercut themselves. Here’s where it usually goes wrong, and what to do instead.

Mistake 1: Treating merch as an afterthought, not a channel

Branded merch isn’t swag for swag’s sake. A hoodie a team member actually wants to wear outside the office, a tote bag that gets reused at the supermarket, a laptop sticker that survives three device upgrades — these are low-cost, long-running advertising that a paid ad budget can’t buy. The mistake isn’t spending money on merch. It’s spending it without thinking about where the item will actually live once it leaves the box.

Before ordering anything, it’s worth asking: will this be worn at a conference and then never again, or will it become part of someone’s actual wardrobe? The answer changes what you should be ordering and how it should be made.

Mistake 2: Picking the wrong production method for the job

This is the one that trips up founders most, because most people outside the industry don’t know screen printing, DTF (direct-to-film), and embroidery solve different problems.

• Screen printing is the most cost-effective option once you’re ordering in bulk — think 50+ units of the same design. Great for large conference giveaways or a first big batch of team tees, but it loses its price advantage fast on small or highly varied runs.
• DTF printing handles small runs, full-colour designs, and gradients well, and it works across a wider range of fabrics than screen printing. It’s the better call for a limited pre-launch drop or a design with a lot of detail.
• Embroidery is what makes something look premium rather than promotional — think a logo stitched onto a polo or a cap for founders, investors, or client-facing staff. It costs more per unit but reads as a considered, permanent choice rather than a giveaway.

Startups that default to whichever method a mate used for their own business, without matching it to run size and use case, end up either overpaying for a small batch or getting a giveaway-grade result for something meant to represent the brand at a serious meeting.

Mistake 3: Forgetting that branding is a system, not a single item

A slick logo on a t-shirt and a flimsy, mismatched business card handed out at the same event tells people two different things about the company. Branding only works as a system: the same colours, the same logo treatment, the same tone across the pitch deck, the packaging, the apparel, and the printed materials on the table at a trade show. Getting one piece right and the rest wrong is often worse than doing nothing extra at all, because the inconsistency is what people notice.

This is especially easy to get wrong for tech startups specifically, because so much of the brand lives on-screen. Founders spend real time on how the product looks in a browser and comparatively none on how it looks printed on paper stock or stitched into fabric — two mediums with very different constraints than a Figma file.

Mistake 4: Ordering once instead of building a repeatable process

The first merch order is usually reactive — a trade show is booked, and someone scrambles. The startups that get this right treat it as a process they’ll repeat: a known supplier, agreed turnaround times, and a small library of assets (logo files in the right formats, brand colours as exact codes, sizing guides) ready to hand over instead of rebuilt from scratch every time. That’s the difference between merch being a stressful monthly fire drill and a five-minute reorder.

What good looks like

A startup that’s got this sorted usually has:

• One local supplier who understands the difference between screen printing, DTF, and embroidery, and can recommend the right one for the run size and budget
• A small, considered core range — one hoodie, one tee, one cap, done well — rather than a dozen half-finished ideas
• Packaging and printed collateral that match the same visual system as the product and website
• A process for reordering without redesigning from scratch each time

None of this requires a big budget. It requires treating the physical side of the brand with the same care as the digital side, and working with a local business that can produce small, well-made runs rather than a big offshore minimum order that locks in a design nobody’s tested. For Melbourne-based startups, that’s exactly the gap outfits like Capsule Merch are built to fill — screen printing, embroidery, and DTF under one roof, sized for a startup’s actual order volumes rather than a factory minimum.

Get the physical side of the brand right once, and it stops being a scramble before every event — it becomes one more thing that quietly does its job in the background, the same way a good product does.

OBSBOT Tiny 3 – Best for the Dad who’s always on camera, like daily meetings (myself included)

If your dad works from home, streams, or does any kind of video content, the OBSBOT Tiny 3 is the kind of upgrade that will will change how he shows up on screen. Don’t let the size fool you though. This thing is smaller than a computer mouse, but it shoots 4K video with a 1/1.28″ sensor, handles challenging lighting conditions better than webcams costing twice as much, and comes with a built-in microphone system. I was impressed enough in my own brightly-lit office to ditch the headset for calls.

The AI tracking locks onto you, follows your movement, adjusts framing automatically, and even responds to voice commands and hand gestures . Whether dad is presenting in meetings, streaming games, or recording content, the Tiny 3 keeps him looking sharp without needing to fiddle with the camera. The magnetised mount grips the monitor securely, and when he’s done, the camera tilts down into privacy mode on its own.

At A$549 it’s not a budget buy, but for everything it does in such a compact package, it’s hard to argue with the value. It comes in a solid hard case too, so it’s just as useful for dads who travel. If he’s been putting up with a mediocre laptop webcam or an old USB camera that belongs in 2015, this is the upgrade worth gifting.

Roborock Qrevo Edge 2 Pro – Best for the Dad Who Hates Cleaning

For the dad who’d rather spend his weekends doing anything other than mopping the floor to help Mum around the house, the Roborock Qrevo Edge 2 Pro is the kind of gift that actually changes his daily routine. At 7.98 cm tall, it slides under the sofa and clears out the dust that’s been sitting there for months, thanks to a LiDAR tower that retracts automatically when it senses low clearance. It has dual spinning mops running at up to 200 RPM with 12N of downward pressure means it’s properly scrubbing the floor, not just dragging a damp pad across it. My family walks barefoot at home, and the difference was noticeable enough that people commented without being asked.

The self-cleaning dock washes the mop pads with up to 100°C hot water, dries them with warm air, empties the dust bin automatically, and even dispenses detergent on its own. Dad basically just needs to top up the water tank every now and then and let it run. The robot can also fully detach its mops at the dock before heading out, vacuum the carpets dry, then reattach and do a separate mop pass on hard floors. No moisture transfer onto thick rugs, which has been an issue with plenty of other models.

At A$2,799 it’s a premium buy but your family members, including Mum would love it. For a household that has both carpet and hard floors, and a dad who appreciates things that just work without constant fiddling, this is the most complete robot vacuum and mop available that I’ve ever tested right now.

Razer Viper V4 Pro – Best Mouse for the Dad Who Games

If your dad already games and has ever complained about his mouse, the Razer Viper V4 Pro is a straightforward upgrade worth gifting. The Viper V3 Pro was already my favourite gaming mouse, and the V4 Pro takes everything that made it great and tightens it up across the board: click latency is down to 0.204 ms, motion latency is 2.5x faster than the previous generation, and true 8,000 Hz polling now works in both wireless and wired modes. At under 49 grams with near-perfect weight distribution, it’s the kind of mouse where nothing ever feels like it’s fighting you.

Battery life is a big step forward too, reaching up to 180 hours at 1,000 Hz polling, and the redesigned wireless dongle houses a taller antenna for a stronger signal. The Gen-4 optical switches are rated for over 100 million clicks with zero debounce delay, which means every click registers cleanly from the first session through thousands of hours of use. Razer Synapse gives full control over DPI, polling rate, button mapping, and even auto-switches the polling rate between gaming and non-gaming use to preserve battery.

At AU$279.95 it’s not a casual purchase, but for a dad who takes gaming seriously, it’s hard to find a better competitive gaming mouse right now. If he’s on a Viper V3 Pro already, the jump is worthwhile. If he’s on anything older or slower, this will be a noticeable difference from the moment he picks it up.

Logitech G512 X 98 – Best Keyboard for the Dad Who Games and Likes to Customise His Keyboard

The Logitech G512 X 98 is the most striking gaming keyboard I’ve had on my desk, and it earns that title through more than just looks. The front-facing Lightbar throws off a glow that sits on a level above most RGB keyboards, and the combination of coloured keycaps and two physical dials gives it a visual identity that’s hard to miss. But the design is only part of the story. The Dual Swap system supports 39 of the keys accept either analog switches or standard mechanical switches, so you can drop analog switches onto W-A-S-D for FPS games or across ability keys for MOBAs, while leaving the rest as regular mechanical.

The analog switches support custom actuation points from 0.1mm to 4.0mm through Logitech’s G HUB software, Rapid Trigger for competitive FPS play, and Multipoint Action with physical SAPP rings that give you a tactile bump at the second trigger point. The premium gasket mount keeps the sound profile satisfying rather than harsh, and the PBT DoubleShot keycaps mean the legends won’t wear or shine after heavy use. The two customisable clickable dials are something I use constantly throughout the day, whether it’s adjusting volume between music and games or assigning a quick macro.

At A$339.95 it’s firmly in premium territory, and kitting out more of the analog switch beds adds further cost on top. But for a dad who games regularly and likes to fine-tune his setup, there isn’t much else on the market offering this combination of looks, switch flexibility, and performance features in a single board. This is now my favourite gaming keyboard, and it’d make an impressive gift to unwrap.

D-Link DUF-E01 14-in-1 Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station – Best for the Dad with a Port-Starved Laptop

If your dad works from a modern ultrabook like myself and spends half his day swapping cables around, the D-Link DUF-E01 Thunderbolt 4 Docking Station is the fix he probably doesn’t know he needs. One Thunderbolt 4 cable connects the dock to the laptop, and suddenly he has 14 ports at his disposal: HDMI 2.1, DisplayPort 1.4, multiple USB-A and USB-C ports, SD and microSD card slots, Gigabit Ethernet, and a 3.5mm audio jack. My own Dell XPS 13 went from frustratingly limited to fully set up in one connection, with my monitor, webcam, speakers, and phone charger all plugged in and running at the same time without having to unplug anything.

The dock delivers 60W of power back to the laptop through the same Thunderbolt 4 cable, which is more than enough to keep most ultrabooks fully charged during heavy use. Data transfer runs at up to 40Gbps, so offloading footage or large files from a storage card is fast. It supports up to three 4K displays at 60Hz, or a single 8K display at 30Hz if needed. The aluminium alloy build manages heat well, and the included magnetic base lets it sit vertically to save desk space. When waking the laptop from sleep, all connected devices including the webcam come back online immediately, which hasn’t always been the case with other hubs I’ve tested.

At A$599.95 it sits firmly in premium territory, and it is worth being honest about that. If dad only needs a couple of extra ports, there are cheaper options. But if he’s running a proper home office setup with monitors, peripherals, and regular storage card transfers, the DUF-E01 covers everything in one compact unit without compromise.

Belkin BoostCharge Slim Magnetic Power Bank 5K with Qi2 – Best Budget-Friendly Gift for the iPhone Dad

For dads who are always on the go and always running low on battery, the Belkin BoostCharge Slim Magnetic Power Bank 5K with Qi2 is an easy gift to justify at A$99.95. It’s thin enough to slip into a shirt pocket and light enough to forget it’s there. The Qi2 magnets snap onto the back of any MagSafe-compatible iPhone with a satisfying, firm click and stay put, no wobbling, no accidentally drifting off-centre while you’re not looking. And because it’s Qi2, it charges at 15W wirelessly, which is noticeably faster than the 7.5W you’d get from a standard Qi pad.

The built-in kickstand is the detail that bumps this above other compact power banks at a similar price. It folds out to prop the phone up in both portrait and landscape, which is useful on a plane, at a desk running a camera feed, or propped up on a meal tray watching something. It works even when the bank isn’t charging, so it doubles as a travel phone stand. There’s also a 20W USB-C port for wired charging, and you can run both wireless and wired simultaneously, so dad can top up his AirPods case on the wireless pad while fast-charging his phone through the cable at the same time.

At 5,000mAh it won’t suit heavy users chasing multiple full charges in a day, and the included 60cm cable is on the short side. But for an iPhone user who wants a fast, slim, reliable top-up that actually fits in a pocket, the Belkin BoostCharge Slim Magnetic Power Bank 5K with Qi2 is a well-considered choice that he’ll reach for every day.

A family planning display that doesn’t come with a monthly bill attached is rarer than it should be, and that’s exactly the angle Laser is leaning into with its new 15.6-inch Full HD Digital Calendar, now available in Australia for $179 during its launch promotion. For families who have lots of things going on (like mine) is really in need of this handy device.

The device is powered by the Whale Framely app and pulls together Google, Outlook, and Apple iCloud calendars into a single touch screen display. Family members can update schedules, edit shared lists, and check reminders from their phones, with changes reflecting on the central screen at home. It supports colour-coded scheduling per family member, custom views across day, week, month, and schedule layouts, and a local weather forecast tied to the calendar’s location.

For parents with kids, there’s a built-in Tasks Manager that runs on a star-powered rewards system, meant to get children involved in chores, homework, and daily routines without constant reminders. The Meal Planning feature lets you map out the week’s meals and grocery needs in one place. A photo screensaver mode turns the screen into a digital photo frame when idle, and Sleep Mode can be scheduled to keep the screen off overnight.

At less than half the price of subscription-based alternatives, I think Laser has spotted a real gap in the market here. Most households don’t need another recurring charge, and a one-time purchase for a family hub like this makes a lot more sense for the long run. We have the Amazon Echo Show 10 at home (check my review) on the kitchen bench, but we are not really utilising it for family calendars and stuff. My wife prints a sheet that explains what private lessons my elder son have during the week and stick it on the fridge. Then, we also have a different stick-on sheet for the groceries list for the week. For details. my wife sends Whatsapp chats daily to explain what’s happening in the day for everyone to see.

With the Laser Digital Calendar, I think all of these can be consolidated better into a single, smart device that displays all the schedules and lists. It’s also 15″ so it’s big enough to see at a glance. The only reason why we didn’t use this in our Echo Show is how small the screen is, so we barely bother with the idea.

The full feature set is accessible without any ongoing fees, which Laser has positioned as a direct contrast to other digital calendar displays that lock features behind monthly subscriptions. The 15.6-inch Full HD touch screen is available at Big W stores nationally, Amazon, and the Laser website. The launch price of A$179 runs until 2 September 2026, after which it returns to the recommended retail price of A$229.95.

Low-profile keyboards have always been a tough sell in competitive gaming circles. The argument against them is simple: slimmer form factors have historically meant compromising on switch performance. But Razer is looking to change that narrative with the Huntsman V3 Pro Low-Profile Tenkeyless 8KHz, a keyboard it’s billing as the world’s first low-profile analog optical esports keyboard.

The star of the show is the new Razer Low-Profile Analog Optical Switch. These are purpose-built to bring the same feature set found in Razer’s flagship analog optical platform into a shorter housing. Actuation is adjustable from 0.1 mm to 2.8 mm, and total key travel sits at 2.8 mm. Rapid Trigger Mode is supported, meaning keys reset based on physical movement rather than a fixed reset point. That’s a meaningful distinction for competitive players who rely on quick, repeated inputs in games like Counter-Strike.

On the polling rate front, the keyboard runs at 8000 Hz, the same as Razer’s full-size flagship boards. Razer’s internal testing with all keyboards set to 0.1 mm actuation showed an average latency of 0.39 ms, which it claims is 52% faster than the nearest competing keyboard tested. Take that with the usual grain of salt, but 8 KHz polling at this form factor is still a noteworthy spec.

Advanced Input Control, first introduced with the Huntsman V3 HE Magnetic 8KHz, makes its way here too. Snap Flex lets you bind two separate actions to a single key, one on press and one on release, which opens up some interesting possibilities for timed sequences in tactical shooters. Dynamic Keystroke takes things further by allowing up to four actions on a single key based on how deeply you press it. Dual-Keypress Priority handles the more common scenario of accidental directional inputs during fast movement, filtering out unintended presses to keep movement clean.

I’ve found that most low-profile keyboards feel really good for everyday use (and improve ergonomics) so seeing these features on a slimmer board is awesome. It’s the kind of thing that could make low-profile a legitimate option for players who’ve previously dismissed it.

The front height measures 19.5 mm, and Razer says the reduced finger travel promotes a more natural wrist position during long sessions. The switches are lubricated and paired with thick internal foam dampening for a quieter, smoother feel. There’s also onboard profile storage and support for Razer Synapse Web, which lets you access your settings from any PC without installing software.

The keyboard even has a competitive pedigree before it officially went on sale. MOUZ’s Lotan “Spinx” Giladi used a pre-release unit at BLAST Bounty Season 2, picking up both a championship win and his first HLTV MVP award along the way. Whether the keyboard deserves any credit for that is debatable (I think having a really good mouse + skill are the main keys to winning first, and then a good keyboard), but it’s a decent signal that it holds up under proper tournament conditions.

If you’ve previously looked at the Razer Huntsman V3 Pro Mini (check Craving Tech’s review) or any of the full-size Huntsman V3 lineup, this is essentially that technology in a slimmer body.

Razer Huntsman V3 Pro Low-Profile TKL 8K Australian Pricing and Availability

It’s available now at Razer.com, RazerStores, and select retailers worldwide for AU$399.95.

We’ve also received a review unit so we will be reviewing this in a couple of weeks or so. Stay tuned for the full review!

After ten years of building 360 cameras, Insta360 has unveiled what it considers its most complete product yet: the Insta360 X6, now available in Australia from AU$1,049.99.

It’s been a long road since the original Nano, which launched as the first plug-and-play 360 camera that could stream footage directly through an iPhone. A lot has changed since then, and the X6 is very much the result of everything Insta360 has learned since.

Insta360 has fitted the X6 with dual custom Sony 1/1.1″ square sensors, co-developed exclusively with Sony for this camera. The dual layout increases total sensor area by 33% and lets in four times as much light per frame compared to previous configurations. Low-light shooting has always been the weak point of 360 cameras, and between these sensors and the new Triple AI Chip System: two dedicated imaging chips plus a Qualcomm 8-core 3.3GHz processor.

Insta360 is making a credible case that night footage no longer needs to be a compromise. A new low-light mode with ambient light sensors actively cuts flicker, and AdaptiveTone 2.0 meters each lens independently and captures two exposures per frame for a wider dynamic range in a single shot.

Then there is also the Dolby Vision support. The X6 is the first 360 camera to record native in-camera Dolby Vision with 10-bit colour depth, meaning the camera is analysing contrast and brightness metadata frame by frame rather than leaving all of that work to post-production. For most people, this means better-looking footage straight out of the camera. For those who do want to grade, there’s I-Log support and more than 1.07 billion recordable colours to work with.

Versatility has always been part of the X Series pitch, and the X6 pushes that further with three distinct shooting modes in one body. In full 360 mode, you’re recording at native 8K50fps and choosing your frame after the fact so there is no need to decide your shot composition before you hit record. Switch to InstaFrame 2.0 and you get direct 4K output with smart subject tracking, effectively using the X6 as a gimbal camera without any extra gear. The third mode is a single-lens action cam setting that tops out at 5K60fps wide-angle or 4K120fps for slow-motion footage.

On the editing side, Insta360 is launching its own 360 AI model called PanoMind alongside the X6. Built in-house and trained on over 10,000 hours of footage across more than 30 shooting scenarios, PanoMind powers three new editing modes: AI Director (which edits a finished vlog automatically while the camera charges), Auto Edit 2.0 (improved highlight recognition and more natural camera movement), and Moments Pro (which combines Insta360’s own 360 imaging algorithm with Google Gemini’s cognitive model to generate stylised clips from keyword prompts).

The hardware itself has had meaningful improvements too. Battery life is rated at 140 minutes of 8K30fps recording, which is 51% longer than the X5 which is a significant jump. It fast-charges from flat to 80% in 24 minutes. The new Replaceable Lens 2.0 is five times more scratch-resistant than the previous version and 60% cheaper to replace, which matters for anyone who actually uses their camera outdoors. The X6 is waterproof to 20m bare (IP68 rated) and can go to 60m with the optional Invisible Dive Case Pro. There’s also 47GB of usable built-in storage if you don’t have an SD card on hand.

For audio, the X6 has a four-mic omnidirectional windproof array, plus a dedicated Hidden Engine Mic tuned specifically to filter wind and isolate engine sound for motorcycle riders. Two external microphones can be connected simultaneously via Direct Connect.

The X6 is available from 13 August in Australia through the Insta360 Official Store, Amazon, and select retailers. The Standard Bundle starts at AU$1,049.99, with an Essentials Bundle at AU$1,159.99. Buyers who purchase and activate before 30 September 2026 receive one year of Insta360+ Premium cloud storage (500GB) and three months of Moments Pro at no extra cost. A 90-day free replacement policy applies to all early buyers, and Insta360’s trade-in programme is available for those looking to put an older camera towards the cost.

At just over a thousand dollars, the Insta360 X6 is positioned as a premium buy but for a 360 camera that also works as a gimbal camera and an action cam with Dolby Vision output, that price should be justified.

Organisations seeking to make faster, more relevant customer decisions should start with focused use cases and build trusted, event-driven data foundations that can support real-time action across the enterprise, according to leaders from AWS and Amperity.

Speaking during the Architecting for Trusted, Real-Time Decisions session at Amperity’s Amplify 2026 conference, Steven M. Elinson, Director, AWS for Travel & Hospitality, and Thomas Koep, Vice President of Customer Strategy at Amperity, outlined how organisations can combine historical customer profiles with live behavioural signals.

Their central message was that real-time personalisation and revenue recovery are valuable starting points, but the larger opportunity is a governed customer context that marketing, operations, customer care and AI agents can all trust.

Why real-time customer context matters now

Travel and hospitality provide a particularly clear view of why real-time customer intelligence is becoming more important.

Elinson said the industry’s historical “look-to-book” ratio had grown from about 10,000 to one to 100,000 to one as metasearch and online travel agencies expanded choice.

In an agentic future, that ratio is predicted to reach one million to one as AI agents search and assemble combinations on consumers’ behalf. At the same time, a customer may have different personas depending on the occasion. Knowing who the person is therefore needs to be combined with an understanding of why they are engaging at that moment.

“It’s not just enough to know who the person is, you have to know the occasion and why they’re coming to visit you,” Elinson said.

The need is intensified by the perishable nature of travel inventory. An unsold hotel room, airline seat or cruise cabin cannot be held for later, and the lost booking can also remove opportunities for ancillary revenue.

Real-time personalisation and abandoned-cart recovery may provide an immediate commercial case, but Elinson said the more strategic opportunity is eliminating fragmented customer views.

Marketing, operations and customer care often hold different versions of the same traveller or guest. That fragmentation creates inconsistent experiences today and greater risk as AI agents begin making and executing decisions at scale.

“The future requires that we eliminate that and have a single version of truth. Although the revenue recovery pieces we’re talking about today are important, it’s this second piece, the unified truth, that’s going to be most important in the agentic future that’s coming,” Elinson said.

AI agents will require access to accurate profile information, the customer’s current journey, sentiment and relevant historical context. A shared, governed customer record allows human teams and AI agents to make informed decisions from the same foundation.

Build a trusted, event-driven data foundation

Many organisations still depend on batch processes and daily refreshes to resolve customer identity, build segments and activate data. That delay creates a window in which a customer’s context can change, or the customer can choose another brand, before the organisation responds.

Koep said real-time and batch data no longer need to operate as separate systems. Unknown signals, such as anonymous browsing behaviour, can be collected over time and connected to an existing customer profile as soon as the person logs in or provides identifying information.

“The interesting thing going forward: you can now use all those unknown signals, bring them into your tenant, store them over time, and the second a guest logs in or provides a piece of PII, you unify all that historical browsing behavior to an Amperity ID,” Koep said.

Once connected, in-session behaviour can be used alongside transaction history, preferences and other profile attributes without waiting for an upstream micro-batch or daily refresh. This supports journeys and decisions based on a customer’s current context while retaining the historical knowledge needed to avoid overreacting to a single click or view.

Elinson said event-driven architecture is the mechanism that enables organisations to detect signals, ingest them rapidly and use the resulting insights to shape customer experiences.

For travel and hospitality businesses, this capability must serve two durable needs at the same time: improving the guest experience and strengthening operating margins.

“So how do you do both? How do you elevate the guest experience while also improving operating margins? It’s through things like event-driven architectures that give you the data and insights to inform both,” Elinson said.

Signals may include structured and unstructured data, clickstream activity, information supplied directly by customers, behavioural observations from transaction systems, partner data and third-party sources.

Streaming services can ingest those signals at high volume and low latency. The data then needs to be standardised, catalogued and made available through storage and database services suited to the specific outcome.

Elinson cautioned against assuming that every problem can be solved with one type of database. Real-time personalisation, economical long-term storage, enterprise analytics and relationship-based insights can require different fit-for-purpose services.

Elinson said an emerging priority is making data catalogues open and available across the enterprise rather than locking them inside a single vendor environment. Open table formats can help organisations retain flexibility, experiment with emerging technologies and connect customer information to new tools without slowing innovation. This becomes increasingly important as AI capabilities and vendors evolve. Organisations need the freedom to test new approaches while maintaining governed access to trusted customer data.

Koep similarly described an open, API-based architecture in which real-time customer information can serve different applications. Unifying event streaming and batch processes can also reduce reliance on multiple point solutions. “Audit your tech stack and ask: do I still need event processor X and event processor Z? Because you can take that money and reinvest it back into the platforms that hold all your customer information in the first place,” Koep said.

Start with a vertical slice and prove value

The organisations moving fastest are not waiting to ingest every possible signal before they begin. Elinson recommended taking a “vertical slice”: identifying the data needed for one business hypothesis, building the supporting pipeline, validating the outcome and then repeating the process.

“We’ve seen some brands spend two years trying to get every single possible signal into their ecosystem before they can go and do personalisation or revenue recovery and that doesn’t bring value to the business,” Elinson said.

The approach gives organisations a way to move from architecture diagrams to measurable outcomes without completing a multi-year infrastructure transformation first. It also creates an iterative pattern for expansion. Each proven use case helps clarify which additional signals, services and capabilities will deliver the next increment of value.

Elinson pointed to examples demonstrating the commercial and operational impact of event-driven architectures. South Korean hyper-retailer Lotte Mart increased its personalisation conversion rate by more than five times after moving to an event-driven architecture. The improvement came from better understanding who the customer was, where they were in their journey and how to activate that context.

Elinson also noted that systems must be elastic enough to respond to sudden demand. Limited-time offers and major events can create significant transaction spikes, requiring architecture that can scale up quickly and then reduce capacity to avoid unnecessary operating cost.

Expedia’s digital model provides another example. Elinson said the travel seller has complete coverage across its data pipeline, enabling channel, revenue, distribution, marketing and other teams to access the insights needed to drive outcomes. “We know the architecture works. It works at scale, and it works for some of the most loved and well-known brands in the world,” Elinson said.

Extend real-time decisions across the enterprise

Koep said digital personalisation is one of the easiest applications to understand, but real-time customer context can also support loyalty and operations.

For example, a hospitality business could combine geolocation or check-in signals with an existing guest profile to trigger a personalised welcome. If the guest qualifies for a higher loyalty tier at check-in, that status could be updated immediately and reflected across downstream systems before the guest reaches their room.

“The signals are just events and traits, you can send that information at the speed your customers actually expect, hyper-personalising those downstream systems as fast as possible,” Koep said.

Closed-loop data also allows email opens, clicks and web behaviour to flow back into the customer profile immediately, supporting faster optimisation without waiting for other systems to process and return the information.

Prepare customer intelligence for AI

Real-time inputs can provide AI systems with current context that was previously delayed by four-hour batches or daily refreshes. This creates opportunities to train, update and apply models using recent customer activity while maintaining connection to a trusted enterprise profile.

Koep summarised three capabilities organisations should prepare for: connecting unknown activity to a known customer profile, using that context in real-time journeys at scale, and extending the architecture beyond digital experiences into loyalty, operations and other enterprise programs.

Elinson said the goal is to give the entire organisation access to a governed source of high-quality, secure customer information. “You want to give your entire organisation access to that governed, single source of truth: high-quality, secure information that lets you continue to accelerate outcomes and make sure you’re ready for what’s coming,” Elinson said.

The emerging architecture is not simply about making marketing faster. It is about giving every authorised system and team the trusted context needed to make better decisions in the moments that matter.

About the Amplify 2026 discussion

The insights in this thought-leadership material are drawn from the publicly available Architecting for Trusted, Real-Time Decisions session at Amperity’s Amplify 2026 conference.

This piece focuses on comments from:

• Steven M. Elinson, Director, AWS for Travel & Hospitality, AWS; and
• Thomas Koep, Vice President of Customer Strategy, Amperity.

Session page and transcript: https://amperity.com/resources/architecting-for-trusted-real-time-decisions

About Amperity

Amperity helps brands act on trusted customer context. Its AI-powered Customer Data Platform resolves identity and unifies fragmented data with real-time signals to power more relevant decisions across marketing, service, analytics and AI systems. More than 400 leading brands worldwide, including Accent Group, Alaska Airlines, DICK’S Sporting Goods, BECU and Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, rely on Amperity to improve customer experiences and drive measurable growth. Founded in 2016, Amperity operates globally with offices in Seattle, New York City, London and Melbourne. Learn more at amperity.com.

BELKIN BOOSTCHARGE SLIM MAGNETIC POWER BANK 5K WITH QI2 REVIEW — PACKAGING

Inside the box, you get the power bank itself and around 60cm USB-C to USB-C cable. It’s a pretty minimal unboxing and contents. The cable length is enough to plug into a laptop or charger while the bank itself sits on a table, though I personally would have appreciated a slightly longer cable for more flexibility. But I have plenty of those, so all is good.

BELKIN BOOSTCHARGE SLIM MAGNETIC POWER BANK 5K WITH QI2 REVIEW — DESIGN AND FEATURES

The first thing I noticed when I picked this up was just how slim and lightweight it is. Gone are the days when carrying a decent-capacity power bank meant dealing with a brick in your pocket. This one slots into a shirt or pants pocket without any fuss. The dimensions (102mm x 72mm x 12mm) are compact, and it barely registers in terms of weight. For something that promises 5,000mAh of capacity, that’s great.

The soft-touch silicone finish feels nice in hand as it’s not trying to look luxurious, but it doesn’t feel cheap either. It’s practical: easy to grip, unlikely to scratch your phone’s back, and it has what Belkin calls a “camera-friendly fit,” meaning it doesn’t cover the rear camera bump when attached. And that design is pretty well executed from what I can see.

On the back, there’s a built-in kickstand that folds out to prop your phone up in both portrait and landscape orientation. I haven’t had the chance to put it through its paces properly yet but I’ve got a flight coming up next week. I can already see exactly how I’ll use it: watching a TV series without hunting for a surface that’s at the right angle, or holding it with my two hands on the meal tray. Beyond travel, it’s actually quite handy at a desk too. If you run a security camera app, a baby monitor, or any kind of live camera feed on your phone, propping it up in landscape or portrait on your desk is a useful setup. Even when you’re not charging, the kickstand works independently as a phone stand, which gives this thing a secondary life beyond just being a battery.

You can also check the current battery level through the four LED indicators with the press of the same button to start charging.

PERFORMANCE & REAL-WORLD USAGE

The Qi2 wireless charging at 15W is where this power bank earns its price. If you’ve been using a standard Qi charger before now, it tops out at only 7.5W on an iPhone, so the difference is noticeable. Qi2’s 15W output feels closer to what you’d get from a wired connection, without actually being wired. It’s not instant, but it’s no longer the slow crawl that wireless charging used to be.

Snapping the power bank onto the back of my iPhone 18 Pro, the magnets locked on with confidence. There’s a satisfying, firm click and no wobble or slipping, even when I’m moving around. That security matters when you’re wireless charging — there’s nothing worse than realising hours later that your phone shifted a millimetre off-centre and didn’t charge at all. My wife tried it on her iPhone 12 mini and it fitted just as well. The magnetic alignment, the physical footprint, the way it sits flush against the back – it all just works, regardless of whether you’re on a newer or older MagSafe-compatible iPhone.

If wireless isn’t quick enough for the situation, the 20W USB-C port handles wired charging and gives you a good speed boost. You can also run both simultaneously so you can use the wireless charging pad to actually charge your Qi-supported, earbuds case! Most Qi-supported power bank I reviewed in the past couldn’t do this so it’s an added bonus when you need to top up some juice on your earbuds like the AirPods. It works great with my EPOS ADAPT E1.

As for the 5,000mAh capacity, the honest answer is that it depends entirely on your habits. For me, it’s plenty. I don’t typically drain my phone multiple times a day, and having something this compact that can give me a meaningful top-up when I need it is more practical than carrying a bulkier 10,000mAh bank I’d use at half its potential. Belkin claims up to 25 hours of extra power, which needs a pinch of salt depending on your phone model and usage, but the capacity is real and usable.

And because it’s so compact and lightweight, I find it easier to decide when I should or should not be carrying this powerbank around.

BELKIN BOOSTCHARGE SLIM MAGNETIC POWER BANK 5K WITH QI2 REVIEW CONCLUSION

The Belkin BoostCharge Slim Magnetic Power Bank 5K with Qi2 is one of those products that’s easy to overlook on spec sheets but makes a lot more sense the moment you hold it. The slim profile and strong magnetic attachment solve two of the most common frustrations with wireless power banks, and the kickstand turns out to be more useful than it first appears. It’s best suited to iPhone users who want a fast, compact top-up solution they’ll actually carry every day, not those chasing maximum capacity.

At A$99.95, the Belkin BoostCharge Slim Magnetic Power Bank 5K sits in a space where you’re paying a premium for the combination of form factor, Qi2 speeds, and Belkin’s build quality. A generic 5K mAh power bank from a no-name brand will cost you a fraction of that, but it won’t have Qi2, it won’t be this slim, and it almost certainly won’t have a kickstand or the magnetic precision that makes this one satisfying to use.

Disclosure: Belkin BoostCharge Slim Magnetic Power Bank 5K with Qi2 review sample was supplied for reviewing

Sony Interactive Entertainment has announced that its first-ever wireless speakers, the Pulse Elevate, will launch on 12 November 2026, priced at $329.95 AUD in Australia. And for a planar magnetic desktop speaker with PlayStation Link built in, it doesn’t seem unreasonable.

The Pulse Elevate speakers carry over a lot of the technology Sony introduced in the Pulse Elite headset and Pulse Explore earbuds, most notably planar magnetic drivers which are typically found in high-end over-ear headphones rather than desktop speakers. Each unit houses one of these drivers alongside a built-in woofer, aiming to cover both the fine audio detail and the low-end thump that gaming tends to demand.

The built-in microphone is tucked into the right speaker. It uses AI-based noise rejection to clean up background sound, which means you could theoretically ditch the headset entirely for voice chat during a desktop gaming session. Whether that works as well in practice as it does on paper is something I’d want to put to the test as open-air mics tend to pick up a lot more room noise than marketing suggests.

Connectivity runs through PlayStation Link, Sony’s proprietary ultra-low latency wireless protocol, which works with PS5, PC, Mac, and the PlayStation Portal remote player. A USB-C adapter is included in the box. Bluetooth is also supported simultaneously, so you could have game audio coming through PlayStation Link while keeping a separate device connected for music or a phone call.

There’s also a built-in rechargeable battery for portable use, with charging docks included for when the speakers sit on your desk. The speakers themselves can be adjusted both horizontally and vertically, and EQ, sidetone, volume, and mic mute can all be tuned via the PS5 system menu or PC software (the latter available post-launch).

This looks like one of the more thoughtful attempts at a desktop gaming speaker that’s actually designed with consoles in mind. Most options in this space are PC-first afterthoughts. The planar magnetic driver angle is compelling if Sony can deliver on the promise, and at this price point it’s clearly targeting serious PlayStation desktop setups rather than the casual audience, hence the premium features and price.

The Pulse Elevate will be available in Australia in both Midnight Black and White at participating retailers. Pre-orders open on Tuesday, 1 September 2026 at 10am local time, and units start shipping from Thursday, 12 November 2026.

Apple is close to launching a pair of AirPods with built-in cameras, and if the leaks are right, we could be looking at the company’s first proper AI wearable as soon as September this year.

A short demo clip discovered inside the macOS Tahoe 26.7 release candidate shows a man holding a book up to the cameras in his AirPods, and Siri responds by identifying it and offering to save it for later. Simple enough on the surface but it hints at something much bigger in Apple’s pipeline.

So what are these AirPods Cameras for exactly?

The cameras aren’t for taking photos or video. According to Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman, they act more like eyes for Siri: low-resolution sensors that feed visual information about your surroundings into Apple Intelligence in real time. Point them at a menu and ask what’s good. Walk into a room and ask what that object is. Get turn-by-turn directions that reference actual landmarks you can see, not just street names.

There’s also a small LED that lights up when visual data is being processed which is Apple’s nod to the privacy concerns that have trailed devices like Meta’s Ray-Ban glasses.

Apple has reportedly been working on two versions of the product under code names B798 and B790. The B798 model slipped to 2027, but 9to5Mac reports the B790 variant has already surfaced in iOS 27 beta code and is on track for a launch this year, potentially alongside the iPhone 18 event in September.

The delay that held both versions back? Siri itself. The smarter, AI-native version of Siri is set to debut in iOS 27, and Apple apparently wasn’t willing to ship AI-dependent hardware without AI-ready software to back it up. That’s actually a good sign.

I haven’t used Meta’s Ray-Bans or any other AI wearable yet, but I’ve been watching this space closely. And honestly? Camera AirPods are the first product in this category that I’m quite curious about, mostly because they slot into hardware I’d already be wearing.

That’s the key difference between this and, say, the Humane AI Pin or a pair of weird smart glasses you’d never take out in public. AirPods are already normalised. Nobody thinks twice when they see you wearing them. Adding a camera to something that’s already invisible in everyday life is a much smarter entry point than strapping a new piece of hardware to your face, plus you can’t record people with them.

That said, I want to see this actually work before I get excited. Apple Intelligence has had a rocky track record like features that were announced, delayed, quietly downgraded. If the camera AirPods ship with half-baked Visual Intelligence, they’ll be a novelty at best. The promise is there. The execution still needs to be proven.

Apple AirPods with Cameras – Australian Pricing and Availability

No AU pricing or availability date yet. Apple hasn’t confirmed anything officially, and the September launch window is still based on supply chain leaks and code strings. That said, if it follows Apple’s usual pattern, AU availability should come with or shortly after the global launch. Expect a premium price tag; these won’t be the cheapest AirPods in the lineup.

One of the most common complaints about robot vacuums, even the expensive ones, is that they do a decent job in the middle of the room and a fairly average job everywhere else. Corners, furniture edges, the gap under the couch that sits 6cm off the floor: these are the places most robots try hard to impress. MOVA’s new flagship, the V70 Ultra Complete, is specifically engineered to address exactly that problem, and it’s now available in Australia for $3,299 RRP.

The centrepiece technology is MaxiReachX, a dual-extension system that includes a 17cm mop arm and a 12cm side-brush arm that work in tandem. The mop extension can reach into spaces as low as 5.9cm, and the whole system is designed to deliver up to three times the edge and corner coverage of a standard robot vacuum design. Whether that holds up in a real home with furniture pushed against skirting boards is something I’d love to test, but on paper (and video), it looks pretty solid.

Suction comes in at 42,000Pa, backed by a motor spinning at up to 150,000RPM. The main brush uses MOVA’s TroboWave DuoBrush system, which is designed to clear tangled hair from the brush roll while the robot is still running. So anyone with pets or has wives with long hair like mine will appreciate. Mopping gets a similar level of attention, with a redesigned mop motor reaching 300RPM and an adaptive mop plate that tilts and adjusts pressure to stay in contact with uneven floors.

Getting around the home is handled by the StepMaster 2.0 system, which uses robotic legs to physically lift the robot’s chassis over obstacles up to 9cm high and this sounds really amazing. Imagine door tracks, U-shaped furniture legs, raised thresholds and similar household nuisances. Our bedrooms have a small slight of steps and sometimes our Roborock robot got stuck there. Navigation uses a retractable DToF sensor under the FlexScope system, which lowers the robot’s profile when passing under low furniture so it doesn’t miss those areas entirely.

The self-cleaning station is called the EcoCyclone Bagless Dust Station. Rather than requiring disposable dust bags, it uses a washable dust tank rated for up to 100 days of hands-free use. The station also handles mop washing via a JetSpray Dryboard 2.0 with angled nozzles and a bevelled washboard, and it auto-dries the mops in around an hour to prevent mould or odour buildup.

On the software side, the V70 Ultra Complete can recognise more than 300 types of household obstacles, and users can add custom objects through the companion app along with safe distances and targeted cleaning zones. There’s also a dedicated Pet Care mode that MOVA claims can detect pets and pet waste with up to 99.9% accuracy. The battery sits at 6400mAh with a Smart Resume function that picks up from where the robot left off after recharging, with up to 30% faster charging than MOVA’s previous fast-charge tech.

The V70 Ultra Complete has also picked up a 2026 Red Dot Award for Product Design, which at least suggests someone beyond the marketing team finds the design credible.

From what I can see, A$3,299 puts this in the premium-to-high-end tier of the Australian robot vacuum market, where it’ll sit alongside some well-established names and we’ve reviewed some of them here at Craving Tech like Roborock Qrevo Edge 2 Pro and Narwal Freo Z Ultra.

The MOVA V70 Ultra Complete is available now through Harvey Norman, Amazon Australia, and the MOVA AU website.

Overwatch Season 4, subtitled Heroes of Busan, landed on 11 August 2026, and it’s one of the more substantial seasonal drops the game has seen since it dropped the “2” from its name earlier this year. There’s a new tank hero, three reworked maps, a proper overhaul to the Battle Pass system, and a handful of competitive changes.

OVERWATCH SEASON 4 – D.MON JOINS THE FIGHT

The highlight for this season is the new hero, D.Mon, or Yuna Lee. She’s finally stepping out of the MEKA Squad lore and into playable form as a Tank hero. She’s built around aggressive front-line pressure: a Plasma Saber for slicing through close-range opponents, Propulsors to stay mobile, a Power Barrier for absorbing punishment on behalf of your team (or for herself), and a Fusion Repeater to extend her reach when she needs to threaten or poke at range.

The kit sounds like Blizzard is aiming for a hero who rewards teams that coordinate. If you’re playing with people who actually follow up, D.Mon’s potential seems high. In randoms where I tested her most of the time? Her effectiveness is actually vary a lot and highly dependable on your team and the composition of the enemies’.

When she was first released, D.Mon was quite underwhelming, actually. A couple of patches did make her in a better position, mostly because she’s more mobile now. Her mech, thanks to her big hitbox, is really easy to get destroyed though – think of D.Va without her defense matrix. While D.Mon has a shield, getting her positioning right is a challenge, especially because she is designed to be mobile and to be on the face of the enemies. I’m quite surprised to find how quick it is to get dismantled from my mech – especially if I’m not careful with how I approach my attack.

A lot of people are still figuring out how to play her correctly and most people would just charge in, try to slash an enemy to the death, only to find that it is their doom instead. I suspect there might be one or two more buffs needed for D.Mon but she is quite situational at the moment. I find that she is pretty good to help flankers from your teammates to finish their job, or to occasionally help your Support from a good, harassing Genji – thanks to D.Mon’s mobility to move around the battlefield quickly.

She is definitely fun to play though and if you can connect her long range weapons, things can also get quite deadly.

THE MAP REWORKS: BUSAN, PARAISO, EICHENWALDE

Three maps have been rebuilt or refreshed for Season 4. Busan now shows the aftermath of Talon’s attack on the MEKA base with new spaces, environmental storytelling, and visual changes that tie directly into the season’s narrative. Paraíso gets a rework with a festive energy despite the city-threatening plot threads, and Eichenwalde picks up new traversal routes to keep its classic fight from feeling stale.

Those sound like cosmetic changes but the rework actually add important, new flaking routes, high grounds, and more cover which we all need for those choke points.

BATTLE PASS REVAMP – FINALLY, SOME FLEXIBILITY!

This is probably the most immediately welcome change for casual players. The Battle Pass is no longer locked into a fixed linear progression so you can now choose which rewards you want to pursue first, switch tracks after completing the intro section, and even swap one Battle Pass skin per season for something from a curated Swap Pool. The UI has also been refreshed to make the whole thing feel less like a chore checklist.

It’s great for those who are struggling to complete the Battlepass during a season – such as when emergencies happen or you somehow get so busy in life. This way, you can prioritise that skin you really want, rather than having to wait all the way until the 70th or 80th level.

Being able to swap a skin is also cool because there’s always that one skin that you don’t like, or if you’ll never play a hero.

COMPETITIVE: EMERALD RANK AND TEAM DRIVES

On the competitive side, a new rank called Emerald has been added between Platinum and Diamond. Blizzard’s reasoning is straightforward: most of the player base sits in Gold and Platinum, and having a rank in that middle band gives people a clearer sense of where they stand and a more meaningful short-term goal to chase. It also pushes the highest Champion divisions to be more exclusive, which makes those placements feel significant.

Team Drives are the other big competitive addition, running as an experimental feature. The idea is that if you win a match during a Team Drive event, you get automatically grouped with other winners and each consecutive win as a team multiplies your Fame gains. It’s a social mechanic designed to encourage players to stick together, with the first Team Drive event running from 4–7 September.

The Overwatch community has always had a tension between solo queue players and those who prefer organised stacks, and this feature straddles both. You can opt out of auto-grouping entirely, though you’ll find it harder to progress alone. Whether it actually creates those satisfying win streaks or just becomes frustrating will depend entirely on who ends up in your lobby.

THE HUD AND FEEDBACK IMPROVEMENTS

The in-combat feedback changes are quieter additions but they are good to have. A new Team Status Indicator shows how many teammates and enemies are alive above the kill feed – in case you missed the audio indicator when someone dies. But note that this is only showing how many of your teammates are alive, not really in the fight so if someone just gets out of the spawn, then you’ll see that extra icon on the UI.

The new “Protects” stat tracks damage mitigation near allies, which gives tanks and supports a better sense of their actual impact beyond healing numbers.

There’s also the return of the percentage damage contribution indicator in the Activity Feed, multi-kill callouts, and improved visual feedback for healing and status effects. Taken together, these make a meaningful difference to moment-to-moment readability, particularly for newer players who often struggle to understand what’s actually happening during a team fight.

EVENTS: SHOOTING STARS AND WORLD CUP CHEER RALLY

The Shooting Stars: My MEKA Mania event runs from 11–31 August and asks you to pick a MEKA Squad pilot to support, complete their reward pass, and contribute votes to a global leaderboard.

The World Cup Cheer Rally follows from 1–14 September, letting players cheer for their conference with rewards tied to participation and a winning-conference bonus. Given that Australia falls under the ASIA conference, there’s some local interest in how that region performs, though the outcome will come down to overall player engagement rather than skill.

Overwatch Season 4: Heroes of Busan is a confident season that addresses several complaints in one go: Battle Pass flexibility, competitive rank identity, and in-combat readability all see meaningful improvements. D.Mon adds a front-line tank that lore fans have wanted for years, and three refreshed maps give veteran players good updates for more strategic evaluations and movements.

The new hero is an interesting one. New tank heroes have a history of either being frustratingly overpowered on arrival or quietly irrelevant until buffs come later. D.Mon definitely felt underwhelming when she was released and she is in better position now. But the question is still when is the best time to pick her, among other better, tank heroes? That will depend on the team composition, the map, and other things so don’t just pick D.Mon for the sake of it.

And oh, there are also awesome, new skins to grab here from the shops. If you are playing Sojourn, you might want to grab her Mythic Weapon Skin bundle – which is her turn this season! Hope you’ve been saving those Mythic Prisms if you are not planning to buy the skin out. There are also cool skins from the Young Gods Mega Bundle, including Jetpack Cat’s Black skin-themed. And oh, the cat also gets some buffs this Season and a lot of people are already freaking out about the cat. I definitely see more cats in my games for the past few days.

For this season, you can also grab the Ultimate Battle Pass Bundle 2026: Season 4 which rewards you with:

• All rewards from the Premium Battle Pass + 20 Tier Skips, with new flexible progression and rewards
• Earn up to 80 Mythic Prisms to unlock the Mythic Koi of Duality Genji Hero skin, Eternal Crystal Sojourn weapon skin, or other Mythic content
• Divine Demon D.Mon and Metalcore Junker Queen Legendary skins
• 2,000 Overwatch Coins

Definitely enough to keep you with the latest skins, especially D.Mon’s first skin!