Matt Brian

Former Managing Editor, UK

Matt Brian has spent over fifteen years sourcing, writing and editing stories about technology, video games and psychedelic rugs. After applying for his first role at The Next Web using his own Wordpress blog, Matt had a brief stint at The Verge before finding his forever home at Engadget in 2013. Originally joining as a news editor, Matt quickly became Managing Editor of Engadget's UK Edition, leading a small team of reporters that produced scoops and closely covered the UK tech news cycle before it was rolled into the global Engadget team. These days, Matt spends his time leading a worldwide news team from his base in the UK, while finding some of the best discounts and savings on popular tech products.

Articles by Matt Brian

Apple's AirPods Pro are just $190 at Woot
Ever since their introduction in late 2019, Apple’s AirPods Pro have been a hot-ticket item. Luckily, the noise-cancelling wireless earbuds have been subject to a mini price war across various online stores, meaning that it’s been possible to regularly pick up a pair for under $200. Make no mistake, the AirPods Pro are Apple’s best true wireless earbuds.
The Raspberry Pi 400 is a $70 keyboard that's also a computer
Now, it’s going one better with the launch of the Raspberry Pi 400 — a complete personal computer built inside a 78-key keyboard that starts at $70.
There's a lot to look forward to in 'Apex Legends' season seven
With season seven less than a week away, EA and Respawn are finally detailing the new content and features that we can expect from the latest update to the popular battle royale game Apex Legends. Thanks to a series of previews, it’s now common knowledge that Apex will soon host a third map, Olympus, plus a new “charmingly eccentric” Scottish astrophysicist called Horizon who comes complete with a pretty harrowing backstory. Horizon — aka Dr. Mary Somers — is a master of gravity.
Valorant's new healer agent will change the game
With Valorant’s second competitive season almost at an end, Riot Games has begun detailing what’s coming to its 5v5 tactical shooter on October 13th. Instead of teleports or climbing ropes, found in two of the game’s other maps, Icebox will encourage players to utilize ziplines to retain the high ground. “Icebox was designed to emphasize skirmishes, sharp aim and adaptive play,” notes Salvatore Garozzo, Level Design Lead at Riot Games.
An Excel error may have led England to under-report COVID-19 cases
A day after the UK government announced its highest number of new coronavirus cases in England, the reason behind the drastic rise has reportedly been revealed.
Twitch Drops expansion rewards viewers when streamers play well
Thanks to streaming services, watching people play video games can often be as fun as taking part. Game studios have paid close attention, often enlisting big name streamers to generate buzz for their upcoming titles via reward systems like Twitch’s Drops platform. Riot Games set Twitch records when it allowed viewers to grab a beta key for its new 5v5 shooter, Valorant, simply by asking that they tune into an activated channel.
Amazon officially delays Prime Day until 'later this year'
Amazon’s own shopping holiday — Prime Day — will still go ahead this year, but it won’t be for a while, the company announced on Tuesday. As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to affect operations worldwide, a spokesperson confirmed “we’ll be holding Prime Day later than usual,” while promising to share “more details soon.” Prime Day 2019 ran for two days from July 15th, and on July 16th the year before.
Amazon's smart shopping cart knows what you're buying
In its bid to further automate grocery shopping, Amazon today unveiled a smart shopping cart that can automatically detect products placed inside it and let customers pay for shopping without visiting a cashier. The “Dash Cart” — the company calls it — looks like any other grocery cart, but uses a mix of cameras, sensors and a built-in scale to work out a person’s purchases and then deducts the total amount from the card associated with their Amazon account. The process might sound familiar, especially considering Amazon has opened a number of automated Go stores over the past year.
'Watch Dogs: Legion' lets you be anyone, if you put in the work
London has fallen. At least, that’s what you’re told when you first visit the dystopian future of England’s capital city in Legion, the third instalment of Ubisoft’s action-adventure series Watch Dogs. Navigating the underground corridors of the Houses of Parliament as an MI-5 agent in the game’s prologue, you quickly understand that DedSec — the subversive hacking group at the center of Watch Dogs 2 — has been framed for a series of horrific bombings at major cultural and tourist spots around London by a mysterious and technologically-advanced group called “Zero-Day” (Ubisoft loves a trope).
Samsung is selling a wireless charger that also sterilizes your phone
In a bid to give its customers an phone-cleaning option that doesn’t involve an antibacterial wipe, Samsung has begun selling a wireless UV charger that promises to “kill up to 99 percent of bacteria within 10 minutes.” The ITFIT UV Sterilizer is a very unremarkable white box that Samsung says is spacious enough to fit a Galaxy S20 Ultra. The embedded 10-watt Qi charger will deliver power while it does its thing.
'Fortnite' Chapter 2 Season 3 features Aquaman and rideable sharks
After weeks of delays, the new Fortnite season is finally here and it’s very....wet?
Riot's first official ‘Valorant’ esports tournaments begin this week
It’s been just over two months since Riot Games debuted its tactical first-person shooter, Valorant.
Virgin Media and O2 announce £31 billion UK merger
The £31 billion puts BT, Sky and Vodafone on notice -- if it's approved.
‘Valorant’ is harvesting talent from stagnating esports
From a Fortnite World Cup runner-up to Overwatch League's MVP, Valorant is luring in some of the world's best shooter esports pros.
Disney+ will limit video quality for its wider European launch
Disney+ hasn't yet gone live for new customers across Europe, but already the streaming service is taking steps to reduce its impact on internet providers' infrastructure in light of the coronavirus pandemic. In a statement, Disney Chairman Kevin Mayer confirmed that it will join Netflix, YouTube and Amazon in reducing its "overall bandwidth utilization by at least 25 percent" in all of the EU markets where Disney+ will launch on March 24th.
'Call of Duty: Warzone' is a serious contender to Fortnite's throne
Despite being pretty late to the party, Epic Games' Fortnite has become the battle royale title to beat. The cartoon-like survival shooter helped the company earn a reported $1.8 billion in 2019, thanks to a mix of slick gameplay, unique building mechanics and tons of big-budget crossovers to get players from every age group to part with their (or their parents') cash. But with popularity comes competition. Fortnite may have dispatched early incumbents like DayZ, H1Z1, Rust and PUBG, but big name publishers have since joined the battle royale arena. Respawn, with the backing of its owner EA, surprise-launched Apex Legends just over year ago and quickly amassed more than 70 million players. But before that came Blackout, a last-player-standing mode that was released as part of Treyarch's multiplayer-focused Call of Duty: Black Ops 4. While it had some initial buzz, the mode never took off quite like Fortnite and Apex Legends. There were a few reasons for this, but the most notable was that it wasn't free-to-play. Then, almost out of nowhere, developer Infinity Ward released Call of Duty: Warzone, a free-to-play battle royale. Unlike Blackout, Warzone is meant to stand alone from the main game and doesn't require you to own Modern Warfare, the game it's built on top of. It delivers the multiplayer experience Call of Duty players know and love, but plays out on an enormous map and with as many as 149 other people. It's a lot, but somehow, it works.
Disney+ discounts yearly subscriptions ahead of its European launch
When Disney dropped the surprise news that its popular streaming service would debut in Europe a week earlier than planned, the company was quickly pressed on whether it would offer any sign-up incentives like it did ahead of its US launch. After a brief period of silence, Disney has decided European users in a handful of countries (outside of The Netherlands, where it went live last year) will enjoy a small discount if they pre-order before the March 24th opening, promising £10/€10 off a full year on registrations before that date.
'Fortnite' Chapter 2 Season 2 is all about secret agents and Deadpool
Fortnite might be one of the biggest games in the world, but the battle royale shooter has certainly had its problems over the past few months. Thanks to a mix of the Christmas holidays, the introduction of a new game engine and various other development issues, Epic Games' main issue was that it was forced to delay the the second instalment of Chapter 2, leaving players to "enjoy" the longest season on record. Thankfully, that all changes today with the introduction of Season 2: Top Secret.
Dark mode is coming to WhatsApp for Android
For such a simple feature, dark mode really does split the masses. Some love the white on black theme that it offers, whereas others (we see you in the comments) routinely question "why is this news?!" If you fall in the former camp and you're a regular WhatsApp user, it's time to get excited because Facebook's popular messaging app is joining the fray.
Disney+ is coming to Europe a week sooner than expected
If you live in Europe and you've been patiently waiting to (legally) get stuck into The Mandalorian, we have some good news. The launch date for a wider European launch of Disney+ has been brought forward by a week, the Walt Disney Company has confirmed, opening its doors in select countries from March 24th.

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