The dedicated fanbase of K-pop sensation BTS, Army, is all too familiar with this routine: arriving at the merch booth hours before the stadium gates open and waiting in line all day, in all types of weather, just for the hopes of snagging a city or member-specific jersey for the band’s Arirang world tour. Am I speaking from experience? Well, yes. Will I do it again and again? Duh.
If you missed out on the tour merch of your dreams, there is another collectible opportunity incoming, and it doesn’t involve a merch booth: McDonald’s is bringing a limited-time lineup of BT21 characters to Happy Meals.
Starting July 14 at participating McDonald’s restaurants, you can find and collect 10 unique, space-themed BT21 toys. There is a toy for each of the seven members of the group, along with three others: Van (a character representing Army), a toy with all of the characters on a spaceship and a poster with stickers. The characters are designed with a ring clip to be attached to bags or clothing.
This marks the third collaboration between BTS and the fast food chain.
In September 2025, McDonald’s launched TinyTAN Happy Meals that included mini figurines of the BTS members in animated cartoon forms. And in May 2021, it unveiled a BTS meal that came with South Korean-inspired dipping sauces, sweet chili and cajun.
A big year for BTS
BTS’s Arirang world tour spans North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia and beyond. The band also partnered with Oreo to release a limited-edition cookie with a brown-sugar pancake filling inspired by a popular Korean street food.
The annual speedrunning marathon event ran from July 5-11.
Games Done Quick/Count Gooby
Summer Games Done Quick is officially over after a marathon week of speedrunning games for a good cause, and the organizers say it raised a total of $2,408,701 for Doctors Without Borders in that time (again!). The annual event in Minneapolis kicked off on July 5 and wrapped up early Sunday morning. Roughly 2,500 people showed up in person, in addition to the thousands of viewers who watched from home.
This year’s Summer Games Done Quick brought a new speedrunning world record: streamer Bluekandy completed a No Dupes run of Kirby Air Raiders with a final time of 37 minutes and 54 seconds. Other highlights include “a Balatro run that beat all odds, and impromptu beatboxing during the Resident Evil: Requiem run,” the organizers noted in an announcement. Everything was streamed on Games Done Quick’s Twitch and YouTube channels, where you can find the full archive of videos now if you missed anything while the event was live.
You’re running your business from a laptop, maybe a coffee shop, maybe three time zones away from your last client call. A free Gmail or Outlook.com address doesn’t cut it anymore when you’re invoicing clients or trying to look like more than a one-person operation. What you need is email hosting that makes you look established without demanding an IT department you don’t have.
I tested the platforms freelancers and small remote teams actually consider when they outgrow free email, weighing setup time, pricing transparency, and how well each one plays with a team that’s never in the same room. Here’s what I found.
Deals are selected by the CNET Group commerce team, and may be unrelated to this article.
What is the best email hosting for small businesses right now?
My top pick is Google Workspace, and it’s not a close call for most freelancers and remote teams. It bundles custom-domain email with Docs, Drive, and Meet, so a solo founder or a five-person remote team gets a full office suite without stitching together separate subscriptions. Setup takes minutes, the mobile apps are the ones your clients already know, and Gemini AI is now baked into every tier rather than sold as a pricey add-on.
The best email hosting for small businesses of 2026
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Screenshot by Ritoban Mukherjee/ZDNET
Google Workspace is the default choice for a reason. It’s built on Gmail, so there’s no learning curve for you or your clients, and comes with the full suite of Docs, Sheets, Slides, Drive, and Meet with every plan. For a freelancer replacing a Gmail.com address, or a remote team that needs shared calendars and video calls without buying a separate tool, that bundling saves real money.
Business Starter runs $7 per user monthly on an annual plan, with 30GB of pooled storage, custom business email, and Gemini AI in Gmail. Business Standard steps up to $14 per user monthly with 2TB of storage and Gemini across every app including Docs, Sheets, and Meet. I found Standard is where most small teams land, since Starter’s 30GB fills up fast once you’re storing client files alongside email.
The setup process took me under 15 minutes from signup to sending my first email from a custom domain, using Google’s guided DNS verification. Where it gets frustrating is cost creep: Every team member needs a full paid seat, there’s no discounted option for shared inboxes like info@ or support@, and Google has raised prices twice in the past two years to fold in AI features you may not use.
Still, if your business already runs on Google tools, or you want your email hosting to double as your document and video conferencing platform, nothing else on this list matches the breadth. Freelancers who only want email and nothing else should keep reading, because you’ll likely pay less elsewhere.
Google Workspace features: Custom business email | Gemini AI assistant | Google Meet video calls | 30GB to 5TB pooled storage | Docs, Sheets, Slides | Google Drive | 24/7 support
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Proton Mail built its reputation on privacy, and that hasn’t changed with its 2026 business tiers. The company is based in Switzerland with strict data protection laws behind it. This means every email is encrypted end-to-end by default and Proton doesn’t scan your inbox to serve you ads or train AI models. For freelancers handling sensitive client data like legal, healthcare, or financial work, that’s a genuine differentiator rather than marketing spin.
Mail Essentials starts around $7 per user monthly on an annual plan and covers custom domains, calendar sharing, and SMTP access for connecting outside tools. Workspace Standard, priced at around $13 per user monthly, adds 1TB of storage plus Proton’s full productivity suite: Drive, Docs, Sheets, and video meetings for up to 50 participants. Workspace Premium pushes past $19 per user monthly and unlocks 3TB of storage and the Lumo AI writing assistant.
I ran into the platform’s most-cited limitation almost immediately: Proton doesn’t support standard IMAP or SMTP the way Gmail does, so using it inside Outlook or Apple Mail means installing Proton’s Bridge app, which is only available on paid plans. That’s a dealbreaker for teams who live in a specific email client and don’t want another background process running.
For a solo freelancer who mostly stays inside Proton’s own apps, though, the encryption and privacy tools genuinely deliver, and migrating from Google Workspace is handled through Proton’s own Easy Switch tool. Note that pricing pages didn’t fully render exact current figures during my research, so double-check Proton’s official business plans page before you commit a team to a paid tier.
Proton Mail features: Zero-access encryption | Custom email domains | Proton Sentinel security | Encrypted calendar and Drive | Built-in VPN | Password manager | Lumo AI assistant
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Microsoft
Microsoft 365 is the safer bet for freelancers and small teams that already work in Word and Excel, or that regularly exchange files with clients who do. Business Basic costs $7 per user monthly on an annual plan and includes web and mobile Office apps, Outlook email on your own domain, and Teams. Business Standard runs $14 per user monthly and adds the full desktop versions of Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. This matters if you’re formatting long documents or complex spreadsheets rather than just viewing them.
Business Premium holds steady at $22 per user monthly and layers on Microsoft Defender for Business, device management through Intune, and stronger identity controls. Microsoft held this tier’s price flat during its July 2026 pricing update even as Basic and Standard both rose. This suggests it wants to nudge security-conscious small businesses toward Premium.
I found Outlook’s interface less immediately intuitive than Gmail for anyone coming from a personal Gmail account, though it’s second nature if you’ve used Office in a past job. The desktop apps are still the gold standard for anyone doing heavy spreadsheet work or long-form document editing, which Google’s web-based equivalents don’t fully match.
Copilot AI is a separate add-on rather than bundled in, unlike Gemini in Google Workspace, so if AI assistance is a priority for your team, factor that extra cost into your comparison. For freelancers who bill clients using detailed Excel models or collaborate with corporate clients who live in Office file formats, Microsoft 365 remains the more compatible choice.
Microsoft 365 features: Custom business email | Outlook desktop and web | Word, Excel, PowerPoint | OneDrive storage | Microsoft Teams | Defender security (Premium) | 24/7 support
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Fastmail skips the productivity-suite bundling entirely and focuses on doing email well, which is exactly what a lot of freelancers actually want. There’s no Docs, no Drive, no video calling tacked on, just fast, ad-free email with real human support behind it. For a one-person business that already uses separate tools for documents and calls, paying for features you’ll never touch inside Google Workspace or Microsoft 365 stops making sense.
Business Basic starts at $4 per user monthly and covers shared team addresses like support@yourbusiness.com, though it skips custom domains and third-party email client support. Business Standard, Fastmail’s most popular business tier, runs $6 per user monthly and unlocks custom domains, Scheduled Send, and compatibility with Outlook, Apple Mail, and other IMAP clients. Business Professional climbs to $10 per user monthly and adds an email retention archive built for legal and compliance needs.
What stood out during testing was how quickly Fastmail’s interface loads compared to Gmail or Outlook on the web, and how easy it is to mix plan tiers within one account, putting an owner on Professional while contractors sit on cheaper Basic seats. Fastmail is also privately owned and based in Australia, which appeals to freelancers who’d rather not hand their inbox to a Big Tech company.
The tradeoff is real, though: There’s no built-in video conferencing, document editor, or AI assistant, so you’ll need separate tools for anything beyond email, contacts, and calendars. If that’s a fair trade for lower cost and a cleaner inbox, Fastmail is one of the better-value picks on this list.
Fastmail features: Custom business domains | Shared team addresses | Masked Email aliases | JMAP-based sync | Scheduled Send and Snooze | Admin controls | 24/7 human support
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Spike takes the most unusual approach on this list, turning your inbox into something that looks and feels like a chat app rather than a stack of formal message threads. For freelancers who find traditional email exhausting, or remote teams that already think in Slack-style conversations, that reformatting genuinely changes how fast you move through a full inbox.
Spike’s free Teamspace plan includes one @spike.team address and 15GB of shared storage, which is enough to test the format before paying anything. The Team plan runs around $4 per user monthly on annual billing and adds a custom domain, free for the first year. The Business plan, priced near $8 per user monthly annually, expands storage to 1TB and adds priority support, while Ultimate tops out near $10 per user monthly for the heaviest users.
During testing, the chat-style layout took a day or two to adjust to, especially for longer client threads where I wanted to see full formatting rather than condensed bubbles. It’s genuinely faster for quick back-and-forth, though, and the built-in video calls meant I didn’t need a separate Zoom or Meet link for quick check-ins.
Spike isn’t the right fit if your business runs on formal, well-formatted correspondence, or if you need deep integrations with tools like Salesforce or HubSpot, since its ecosystem is thinner than Google’s or Microsoft’s. But for a freelancer or small remote team that wants email to feel less like a chore, it’s worth the free trial.
Spike features: Conversational email threads | Custom team domain | Shared inboxes | Built-in video and voice calls | Collaborative notes and tasks | AI email summaries | Priority support (Business tier)
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Email hosting platform
Starting cost
Customizable?
Integrations
Easy to use?
Google Workspace
$7 per user per month (annual)
Yes — full app suite plus admin controls
Extensive — Google Workspace Marketplace, thousands of third-party apps
Small businesses rely on email providers that offer an accessible UI, good support handling, and very little setup friction. With that in mind, here’s some things to look out for:
Pricing structure: Most email platforms charge per user, which adds up fast once you bring on contractors or part-time help. Check whether a provider lets you mix plan tiers like Fastmail, because then you can create a combination that ends up a lot cheaper.
Custom domain support: Not every entry-level email hosting tier includes custom domains. Fastmail’s Basic plan and some of Spike’s free tiers don’t have it, so confirm that your starting plan actually lets you use your own domain before signing up.
Migration tools: Moving years of email, contacts, uploads, and calendar events is a huge hassle when switching providers. Look for a dedicated import tool, like Proton’s Easy Switch or Fastmail’s guided migration tool, so you don’t have to manually forward messages.
Client-side compatibility: If you or your team already live in Outlook, Apple Mail, or another desktop client, make sure the new hosting provider supports standard IMAP and SMTP. Proton Mail requires its Bridge app for this, which adds more setup steps that some people won’t want to deal with.
Storage limits and pooling: Google Workspace pools storage across Gmail, Drive, and Photos, which can fill up faster than it looks on paper. Spike offers much less storage but it does not have an attached productivity suite to share memory with.
AI features and their cost: Gemini comes bundled into every Google Workspace tier, while Microsoft charges extra for Copilot. If drafting and summarization with AI matter to your workflow, weigh that cost difference directly rather than comparing base prices alone.
Support responsiveness: Freelancers without an IT team need fast answers when something breaks. Fastmail and Proton both lean on human support teams, while larger providers often route smaller accounts through chatbots first.
As a B2B tech journalist who’s reviewed software for startups and publications for years, I’ve set up and torn down more business email accounts than I can count, from small freelance operations to funded startups scaling their first support team. I also leaned on my own experience running a remote freelance business.
I set up a test account on each platform using a real custom domain, then measured how long it took to get from signup to sending a properly authenticated email, including SPF and DKIM setup. I also checked each provider’s official pricing page directly rather than relying on third-party estimates, since introductory rates and renewal pricing often diverge in ways that catch small businesses off guard.
Beyond setup speed, I weighed how each platform handles the realities of freelance and remote work: mixing plan tiers for contractors, connecting to existing email clients, and whether migrating away later would be painless or a headache. I prioritized platforms that a solo freelancer or five-person remote team could configure without hiring outside help, since that’s the actual constraint most small businesses are working within.
A free Gmail address signals that your business isn’t fully set up, which can cost you credibility with clients and vendors. Business email hosting gives you a custom domain, stronger spam filtering, and admin controls you can’t get on a free personal account, and it’s often cheaper than freelancers expect.
Most providers on this list offer a guided migration tool that imports your old mail, contacts, and calendar events automatically. Expect it to take anywhere from a few minutes for a small inbox to several hours for years of archived mail, and always keep your old account active until you’ve confirmed everything transferred.
Email hosting alone, like Fastmail, gives you inbox, calendar, and contacts on your own domain. A productivity suite, like Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, bundles that with document editors, video calls, and cloud storage, usually at a higher per-user price.
Budget-friendly business email with a free tier for up to five users, plus optional access to Zoho’s broader suite of CRM and accounting tools.
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An email and collaboration platform aimed at small and mid-sized businesses that want on-premises or hybrid deployment options alongside cloud hosting.
There is a dedicated Copilot key on my ASUS Zenbook 14 OLED. Months after buying the laptop, it may be one of the least important keys on the entire keyboard. My Zenbook UM3406 runs on AMD’s Ryzen AI 300 series processor, complete with a dedicated NPU offering up to 50 TOPS of AI performance. That qualifies it as a Copilot+ PC, which makes it a part of what Microsoft once described as the new era for Windows.
AI is already a regular part of my workday. I use it for research, brainstorming, and working through ideas. But rather than relying on something built into the Windows OS, I’ve relied on the likes of ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini.
How Copilot+ created the wrong expectation
Live CaptionMicrosoft
The name “Copilot+ PC” implies a computer built around Microsoft Copilot. In practice, the certification mostly describes the hardware and local Windows features. The NPU inside my Zenbook can accelerate experiences such as Windows Studio Effects, Live Captions, improved search, and Recall. The Copilot chatbot itself requires an internet connection. So you can basically run it on even Macs and web browsers, and not just Windows PCs. Pressing the special keyboard button does not open an assistant powered by the entire 50TOPS NPU sitting inside my laptop.
The entire marketing around this has been poorly communicating what Copilot was meant to do. Microsoft marketed Copilot+ PCs around a grand reinvention of personal computing, with local AI changing how we use Windows systems in daily workflows. The NPU is there, and the badge on the machine proves that it’s capable of the various AI menus in Windows. But very few of them address a problem I regularly encounter.
Quick commands on Windows 11 RecallNadeem Sarwar / Digital Trends
Recall is probably the most useful out of the bunch. It can save snapshots of your activity and help you recover something you previously saw. If you’re constantly dealing with a large number of important files or conversations, this can be a lifesaver. Even then, I have yet to need it badly enough to let Windows build a searchable history of my screen. Live Captions and Studio Effects are also useful in the right circumstances. Though they remain occasional utilities rather than reasons to rethink how I use my notebook.
Other AI services were just more convenient
I already know where I need to go for my workflows. ChatGPT is usually a starting point for broad research and working through ideas, while Claude enters the picture when I’m dealing with longer passages. Each service has their limitiations though, and yet, they are all familiar with their answers now.
Copilot quite literally came bundled with my PC, and up until recently, I never gave it a real shot. After trying it out now, I can see why I initially brushed it off. Microsoft uses the Copilot name across several different products, including its consumer assistant, Microsoft 365 Copilot, GitHub Copilot, and various Windows integrations. Knowing which Copilot does what can require more effort than opening the tool I already trust.
Microsoft reorganized its Copilot teams this year to create a more coherent experience across consumer and commercial products. That move alone suggests the current structure has become difficult to explain.
Putting Copilot everywhere did not make it essential
Microsoft tried to solve the adoption problem through visibility. Copilot appeared everywhere, in Windows, Edge, Office, Paint, Notepad, and other parts of the operating system. PC keyboards gained a dedicated key for the first time in decades.
Microsoft has since started removing or reducing some of those entry points. Even Microsoft’s hardware partners have acknowledged the disconnect. Dell said consumers were buying newer laptops for tangible improvements such as performance and battery life, while AI terminology often left them confused. This is also one of the reasons I picked my laptop. A gorgeous OLED display, thin-and-light design, and reliable battery life.
Even those who tried it find it hard to stick with
After I covered Copilot’s low uptake, an author emailed me about his own experience. He had used the service extensively while writing a book, yet updates and policy changes sometimes caused it to reject tasks it had previously completed. He said he now opens Copilot with one question in mind: “Will it or won’t it?”
Click to Do feature in Windows 11.Microsoft
To be fair, generative AI services change constantly, and refusals can happen across Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. However, Copilot carries an additional burden because Microsoft presents it as an integrated productivity assistant. This means that users expect consistency from a tool built directly into their operating system and work software.
Is this really futureproof?
I do not regret buying the Zenbook. It is a capable laptop, and the NPU may become increasingly useful as more applications run AI workloads locally. Copilot+ certification also provides some reassurance that the machine meets Microsoft’s current baseline for upcoming Windows features. But that just makes it sound like futureproofing rather than being handy right now.
And Microsoft might just move the baseline higher as systems get more advanced and requirements grow. So for now, I will continue using the AI tools that already fit my workflow. Though I’ll be giving Copilot a try more often to see where it really makes a difference for me.
Anker’s Prime 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Station has dropped to $99.74 on Amazon, down from $149.99. This is one of Anker’s newest accessories, and Amazon’s sale today is a match of the all-time low price that we last tracked during Prime Day.
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The Prime 3-in-1 Wireless Charging Station features Qi2.2 support, which lets a compatible MagSafe iPhone charge at up to 25W. It’s the same speed as Apple’s MagSafe charger, and it is 10W faster than the standard Qi2 MagSafe chargers. You can also simultaneously charge an Apple Watch and AirPods with the device.
Below you’ll find a list of the best Anker discounts on Amazon this week, also including wall chargers, portable batteries, and more. There are a few more accessories that are matching their Prime Day prices, including Anker’s SOLIX Power Station with Lantern. You can get this accessory for $189.99, down from $249.99.
Wall Chargers
Wireless Chargers
Portable Chargers
Portable Power Stations
If you’re on the hunt for more discounts, be sure to visit our Apple Deals roundup where we recap the best Apple-related bargains of the past week.
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Multiple AirPods models hit record low prices this week, including the AirPods Pro 3 and AirPods Max 2. We’re tracking these great discounts alongside an ultra rare discount on a new Switch 2 on Woot, plus a Summer sale at Sonos.
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Early Prime Day deals continue to trickle in as Amazon this week has brought back the best price of the year so far on the Apple Watch Ultra 3, taking $99 off the Black Titanium model with the Black Ocean Band. It’s been nearly two months since we last tracked notable discounts on the Apple Watch Ultra 3, and right now only one model is on sale at $99 off.
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Amazon Prime Day is just one week away, and early deals are already available on charging accessories, monitors, and more. Prime Day 2026 is set to officially kick off on June 23, and this year it will run for four days and end on June 26.
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A patch Microsoft released on Wednesday to fix a zero-day vulnerability in its Defender security engine may cause Windows machines to write files large enough to completely consume available disk space, the researcher who discovered the flaw said.
RoguePlanet, tracked as CVE-2026-50656, came to public notice in June when NightmareEclipse, the pseudonymous name used by a researcher, disclosed it along with code for exploiting it. The vulnerability allows remote attackers to gain administrative control of Windows 10 and Windows 11 machines, even when real-time protection has been disabled. Over the past few months, the anonymous researcher has published a handful of other zero-days that have sent Microsoft scrambling to develop patches.
Writing files of unlimited size
Microsoft said Wednesday that it patched RoguePlanet with an update to the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine, which is used by the Defender antivirus app. The fix will automatically be downloaded and installed without users having to take any action. Wednesday’s update also includes “defense-in-depth updates to help improve security-related features.”
In a post on Thursday, NightmareEclipse said the defense-in-depth additions produce behavior that may allow attackers to exhaust all available space on a hard drive by writing massive amounts of data to it. The newly introduced mitigations create a problem in mpengine.dll, the driver associated with the Microsoft Malware Protection Engine, that in some cases causes it to leak 8 bytes of data when trying to open a file. New functionality in SpyNet, a cloud service that allows Microsoft Security Essentials or Forefront Endpoint Protection to send reports about suspicious software and programs to Microsoft, also plays a role in the potential mass file-writing behavior.
Defender normally places hard limits on how big a file can be written to disk when scanning and quarantining a machine.
“This implementation make [sic] sense, because quarantining a huge file will cause Defender to completely exhaust the available disk space,” the researcher wrote. “I found a small exception to this rule, apparently the spynet functions in mpengine.dll really wants [sic] to keep a local copy of Zone.Identifier ADS file and it does not matter how big this file is, Windows Defender will cache it locally anyways.”
Disney is exploring a free tier for Disney+ that would make some content available without a subscription. According to Nielsen data, the three largest free streamers accounted for 18.7% of watch time on U.S. TVs in April, up from 16.8% a year earlier and 12.7% in April 2024. Business Insider reports: Product and tech chief Adam Smith spoke about enabling free-tier content during a streaming town hall on Thursday afternoon, one staffer said. Smith didn’t share a timeline for this initiative or a sense of the scope, this person added. A person familiar with Disney’s streaming strategy said these talks are part of an ongoing discussion about concepts to better serve fans. Currently, the Disney+ and Hulu bundle costs $12.99 a month with ads or $19.99 without ads at full price.
A Korean news outlet has revealed apparent US pricing for the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 8 and Z Fold 8 Ultra.
The Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is expected to start at over $2,000, with a $2,099 price tag being deemed likely.
On the other hand, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 is tipped to start at $1,899.
Samsung will launch its new foldable phones on July 22, and the company is tipped to offer the Galaxy Z Flip 8, Galaxy Z Fold 8, and Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra. We’ve already heard murmurings about European prices, but we might just have US pricing for the Fold models.
Korea’s SE Daily outlet reports that the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra’s US price will exceed $2,000, citing industry sources. More specifically, the outlet says a $2,099 price tag is considered “likely.” By contrast, the Galaxy Z Fold 7 launched at $1,999.99. So the Z Fold 8 Ultra would likely be $100 more expensive than its predecessor.
What do you think of the leaked Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra price?
26 votes
This figure isn’t set in stone yet, as Samsung is reportedly conducting a final review of this price and its overall pricing strategy ahead of the July 22 launch. Either way, a price hike wouldn’t be unexpected given the RAM crisis and the Galaxy S26 family’s price increases earlier this year. This isn’t a huge increase, but the Galaxy Z Fold series wasn’t exactly cheap to begin with.
The outlet also reports that the Galaxy Z Fold 8 or Wide Fold will start at $1,899 for the 256GB model. The new foldable is expected to offer a 4:3 internal screen, making it more ideal for video playback than previous Galaxy Fold models. Samsung also effectively confirmed that it would be powered by the Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 for Galaxy chip, while previous leaks point to a 4,800mAh battery and a dual 50MP rear camera setup.
Meanwhile, the Galaxy Z Fold 8 Ultra is expected to have a Snapdragon 8 Elite Gen 5 chip and a 5,000mAh battery. The phone is also rumored to pack a 200MP main camera, a 50MP ultrawide shooter, and a 10MP 3x camera.
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OpenAI unveiled its newest family of models on Thursday, introducing a new set of heavyweight programs into an increasingly crowded field of AI offerings.
GPT-5.6 comes in three variants: Sol (considered its workhorse), Terra (a more intermediate option), and Luna (its budget friendly option). These models expand what users can do across a variety of fields — with the company promising powerful capabilities in enterprise work, coding, and even scientific research.
CEO Sam Altman has promised that his company’s newest models are orders of magnitude more efficient and cost-effective than previous versions, recently telling CNBC that Sol is 54% more token efficient when it comes to AI coding tasks.
Most notably, the company calls 5.6 its “strongest cybersecurity model yet, achieving frontier performance with significantly fewer tokens.”
Indeed, much hubbub has been made about the model’s cyber capabilities, as the Trump administration previously sought to restrict its rollout, ostensibly due to fears of how the model could be misused. GPT-5.6 supports defensive activities, including threat modeling, code review and patching, and blue teaming (simulating an attack on your own systems to find weaknesses before real hackers do).
OpenAI also released a new tool called ChatGPT Work, which — just as it sounds — is designed as a workplace companion for enterprise teams, running on desktop, web, and mobile, that can help with daily clerical tasks, like drafting documents, spreadsheets, and presentations.
OpenAI’s newly announced family of models follows on the heels of similar releases this week from competitors SpaceXAI and Meta.
However, GPT-5.6 and its attendant marketing seems most designed to take aim at OpenAI’s primary opponent, Anthropic. Anthropic has managed to make itself the likable underdog of the AI race, focusing fixedly on enterprise customers and winning a growing share of support as a result.
Not to be outdone, OpenAI cites the Artificial Analysis Coding Agent Index, a notable benchmarking metric, to claim that its latest family of models outshines Anthropic’s models at every turn.
OpenAI calls Sol its “best coding model yet,” and has explicitly compared it to Anthropic’s recently released (and much hyped) Fable. Using the Coding Agent Index, OpenAI claims that Sol “sets a new state of the art at 80, 2.8 points above Fable 5, while using less than half the output tokens, taking less than half the time, and costing about one-third less.”
It adds: “That advantage extends across the family: Terra performs just above Fable 5, while Luna outperforms Opus 4.8.”
The company says that 5.6 is now available across ChatGPT, Codex, and the OpenAI API. Availability per million tokens is priced as follows: Sol is $5 input / $30 output, Terra is $2.50 input / $15 output, and Luna is $1 input / $6 output.
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Both the black and green pair have hit this price at the retailer, but they’re actually not the only colors on sale. The blue, pink, and white pairs are discounted for a couple dollars extra at $29.99. No matter which color you go with, you’ll still enjoy some savings.
These earbuds have stood out to us as the best budget pair under $50, with our roundup saying, “The active noise cancellation on them is impressive for their price, able to block out the bustle of busy streets or the noisy gym.” However, it does add that, “it isn’t the best noise cancellation or sound we’ve ever experienced,” as a “$50 pair of earbuds just can’t compete with a $300 pair,” but if you don’t mind that, they’re a great option to grab that won’t break the bank.
Our roundup also highlights that, “Advanced audiophiles on a budget will enjoy the addition of custom EQs and multi-point connection.” Plus, their battery life can definitely keep up with you, boasting up to 45 hours with the charging case, or 25 hours with ANC enabled.
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