Giveaway: If the force is with you, this badass lightsaber could be yours

By Chris DeGraw Published May 3, 2019

Star Wars Gadgets + SaberForge Giveaway : Tech For Less

To celebrate May the Fourth, we took a look at some of our favorite Star Wars toys and gadgets in this week’s Tech for Less. Not only that, we’re giving away one badass lightsaber courtesy of our friends at Saberforge. Check out the video above for a closer look at each pick, and don’t forget to enter below for your chance to win!

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LittleBits Droid Inventor Kit

LittleBits toys are aimed at giving anyone, regardless of age, the opportunity to dip their toes in building, coding, and modifying their creations. The Droid Inventor Kit follows this same philosophy, with the added benefit of looking suspiciously similar to a certain Astromech Droid by the name of R2D2. With step-by-step instructions from the accompanying app, you’ll have your completed droid in no time. From there you can begin to tinker with different pieces, completing missions, adding skills, and learning all while having fun.

Battle-Worn BB-8 by Sphero with Force Band

This BB-8 by Sphero, along with the Force Band, is about as close as any of us will ever get to using the force. With the band strapped to your wrist, you can control BB-8, pushing it forward, making turns, and returning to you at your will. Make an obstacle course for it to race through, program custom missions easily with an app, even set it to patrol on their own to ward off any bad guys. Every Jedi deserves a droid buddy, and BB-8 is one of the best (and cutest).

BB-8 USB Car Charger

For those of us who prefer using our wheels over our heels, this BB-8 Car Charger makes for a proper road trip companion. If fits in most cupholders, and comes with an adapter for the less common sizes. With two 2.1 amp USB ports, it’s got enough charging power to juice up two tablets simultaneously. Best of all, while you explore the galaxy, it’ll occasionally make Droidspeak with you and swivel its head from side to side to take in the view. BB-8 makes for good company when podcasts just aren’t enough to liven up the trip.

Desktop Lightsaber Lamp

Who doesn’t love a good desk decoration? This lightsaber lamp goes above and beyond that, giving you some serious mood lighting. It comes in Kylo Ren, Darth Vader, and Luke Skywalker saber designs, so choose your side wisely. At 31 inches tall, this lamp definitely isn’t going to go unnoticed. It’s also plenty bright enough to set the stage for a long gaming session, YouTube video, or just on your bedside table.

Saberforge Light Saber

Saberforge makes some of the most authentic, convincing lightsabers this side of Tatooine, and with a polycarbonate blade and aircraft aluminum, it can withstand a serious beating. These sabers are great for battling, cosplays, and just adding to your collection. They’re completely customizable, too. Using their online saber builder, you can choose your blade length, color, pommel, emitter, and so much more. There’s something extremely satisfying about wielding one against evil (or just your buddies), that words alone cannot express.

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Former Digital Trends Contributor

Computing

Google Gemini’s best AI tricks finally land on Microsoft Copilot

Copilot app for Mac

Microsoft’s Copilot had a rather splashy AI upgrade fest at the company’s recent event. Microsoft made a total of nine product announcements, which include the agentic trick called Actions, Memory, Vision, Pages, Shopping, and Copilot Search.

A healthy few have already appeared on rival AI products such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, alongside much smaller players like Perplexity and browser-maker Opera. However, two products that have found some vocal fan-following with Gemini and ChatGPT have finally landed on the Copilot platform.

Cars

Rivian set to unlock unmapped roads for Gen2 vehicles

rivian unmapped roads gen2 r1t gallery image 0

Rivian fans rejoice! Just a few weeks ago, Rivian rolled out automated, hands-off driving for its second-gen R1 vehicles with a game-changing software update. Yet, the new feature, which is only operational on mapped highways, had left many fans craving for more.
Now the company, which prides itself on listening to - and delivering on - what its customers want, didn’t wait long to signal a ‘map-free’ upgrade will be available later this year.
“One feedback we’ve heard loud and clear is that customers love [Highway Assist] but they want to use it in more places,” James Philbin, Rivian VP of autonomy, said on the podcast RivianTrackr Hangouts. “So that’s something kind of exciting we’re working on, we’re calling it internally ‘Map Free’, that we’re targeting for later this year.”
The lag between the release of Highway Assist (HWA) and Map Free automated driving gives time for the fleet of Rivian vehicles to gather ‘unique events’. These events are used to train Rivian’s offline model in the cloud before data is distilled back to individual vehicles.
As Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe explained in early March, HWA marked the very beginning of an expanding automated-driving feature set, “going from highways to surface roads, to turn-by-turn.”
For now, HWA still requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road. The system will send alerts if you drift too long without paying attention. But stay tuned—eyes-off driving is set for 2026.
It’s also part of what Rivian calls its “Giving you your time back” philosophy, the first of three pillars supporting Rivian’s vision over the next three to five years. Philbin says that philosophy is focused on “meeting drivers where they are”, as opposed to chasing full automation in the way other automakers, such as Tesla’s robotaxi, might be doing.
“We recognize a lot of people buy Rivians to go on these adventures, to have these amazing trips. They want to drive, and we want to let them drive,” Philbin says. “But there’s a lot of other driving that’s very monotonous, very boring, like on the highway. There, giving you your time back is how we can give the best experience.”
This will also eventually lead to the third pillar of Rivian’s vision, which is delivering Level 4, or high-automation vehicles: Those will offer features such as auto park or auto valet, where you can get out of your Rivian at the office, or at the airport, and it goes off and parks itself.
While not promising anything, Philbin says he believes the current Gen 2 hardware and platforms should be able to support these upcoming features.
The second pillar for Rivian is its focus on active safety features, as the EV-maker rewrote its entire autonomous vehicle (AV) system for its Gen2 models. This focus allowed Rivian’s R1T to be the only large truck in North America to get a Top Safety Pick+ from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“I believe there’s a lot of innovation in the active safety space, in terms of making those features more capable and preventing more accidents,” Philbin says. “Really the goal, the north star goal, would be to have Rivian be one of the safest vehicles on the road, not only for the occupants but also for other road users.”

Cars

Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan hit the brake on shipments to U.S. over tariffs

Range Rover Sport P400e

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced it will pause shipments of its UK-made cars to the United States this month, while it figures out how to respond to President Donald Trump's 25% tariff on imported cars.

"As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are taking some short-term actions, including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans," JLR said in a statement sent to various media.