It’s really, really hard to find a good Microsoft Windows device for under $500. There are some diamonds in the rough—devices that sacrifice display quality or form or speed to get the price way down. Yet until today there was no clear winner. Microsoft’s new Surface Go could change that.

The new 10-inch Windows tablet looks just like the pricey Surface Pro we adore. Only smaller, and starting at just $400.

The finish Microsoft is giving this $400 device is what really makes it appealing. Think an Apple 9.7-inch iPad (which is absolutely one of this device’s main competitors) or an actual Surface Pro. Its 1,800 x 1,200 resolution display has a 217 PPI and a nice wide viewing angle, so it never looks as cheap as its price tag suggests.

And there’s USB-C! This is the first Surface tablet from Microsoft to have USB-C, and it is about damn time. The Surface Go will charge via the port (provided your power brick is big enough), but it won’t support Thunderbolt 3. And if you want to use one of Microsoft’s pricey docks, or charge the way Microsoft intended, you’ll have to use the traditional Surface power port, which Microsoft continues to cram in its mobile Surface products.

Another thing Microsoft has crammed in is far more welcome. The Surface Go is using the same hinge Microsoft introduced with the Surface Pro. What that means is you should have a device with the sturdiest 2-in-1 hinge in the game. The sample I played with stayed securely in every position I stuck it in. There was no floppiness.

The immediately luxurious look of the thing and that appealing hinge almost distracted me from the specs. Those specs are far less appealing than the price. $400 will get you just 64GB of storage, 4GB of RAM, and a wimpy Pentium 4415Y processor.

That’s pretty average for the price point, and generally means a machine that is deeply slow and frustrating to use. Yet Microsoft insists it worked hand in hand with Intel to optimize software for the CPU. Specifically it’s been optimized to work better with Windows and Microsoft Office.

I obviously haven’t had time to benchmark the Surface Go, but PowerPoint wasn’t as noticeably sluggish as I’ve come to expect from this CPU. Instead it seemed responsive—speedy even.

But Office is just a handful of programs. If Microsoft’s speed claims bear out, it might make the Surface Go a fantastic option for students on a budget, but it wouldn’t necessarily help the people who need Photoshop, or even a card game like Gwent.

Microsoft is offering additional configurations, which increase the RAM and storage, but stick with the CPU. Microsoft reps told us it steered clear of the Core i series to help preserve battery life. Microsoft claims it gets over 9 hours.

Adding more RAM and storage will increase the cost of the Surface, as will the keyboard cover, which retails for $100 if you want a plastic cover, and $130 if you’d prefer Alcantara.

As that cover is vital to using the Surface Go as a laptop, it means, realistically the price is $500 to $530–not $400. That puts it in the same price range as the Samsung Chromebook Pro—our current favorite cheap laptop.

That Chromebook has a bigger display, and it’s also an actual laptop and not a tablet. But it runs Chrome OS and is heavier than the Surface Go, which weighs just 1.15 pounds.

This is also intended to compete with with $330 9.7-inch iPad. That device, which Apple is marketing heavily as an education device this year, also requires you spend money on a keyboard. Only instead of an elegant one that snaps into place and simply works, the iPad needs a Bluetooth keyboard, and the solutions currently available aren’t nearly as sleek or elegant as Microsoft’s solution. So even though the iPad might cost less, it won’t necessarily give you the same laptop-like experience Microsoft’s tiny Surface aspires to.

And aspires is the key word. While my initial reaction is “when can I buy one,” I’ve only spent a little time with it. There’s some definite yellow flags that suggest it couldn’t be as slick as Microsoft wants us to believe. The nine hours of battery life (Apple promises 10), cost creep from the keyboard, and that Pentium processor are absolute cause to be wary of this as the next device for the family to share or your kid to take to college.

But none of us should have to wait too long to have a better understanding of if this is the budget Surface we’ve wanted or a too slow dud. The Surface Go is on sale July 10th and ships in August.

One of the biggest arguments in favor of vaping is that it can help people ease themselves away from their addiction to tobacco smoking. But a new study published this week in PLoS One seems to offer a strong rebuttal to that line of thought. It suggests that people who use both tobacco and e-cigarettes are actually less likely to quit smoking than people who only stick to tobacco.

The researchers studied data from survey company GfK’s KnowledgePanel, an ongoing service that offers small cash rewards to users for every survey taken. They looked at data from more than 1,200 smokers who had been surveyed in August and September of 2015, then continued to track their smoking status. Of the 1,000 people who remained active members of KnowledgePanel a year later, around 850 answered a followup survey.

Roughly 30 percent of people at the beginning of the survey said they both smoked and vaped. But a year later, 90 percent said they still smoked. People who only smoked, however, were actually twice as likely to report quitting. The lower chances of success among users of e-cigarettes, or electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS), held true even if people said they turned to vaping as a way to quit. And dual users, on average, still smoked the same amount of cigarettes a day as non-vapers did a year later.

“Any smoker would tell you that quitting smoking is extremely difficult,” lead author Scott Weaver, an epidemiologist at Georgia State University’s School of Public Health, told Gizmodo via email. “But, that nicotine addiction is difficult to overcome doesn’t readily explain why smokers who also used e-cigarettes were less likely to quit than smokers who did not use e-cigarettes, even though they, the dual users, were more likely to try to quit smoking.”

Some earlier studies have suggested that switching to vaping can help cut down on smoking. According to Weaver, though, these studies might be dated or otherwise unrepresentative of how people’s habits are actually changed by these devices.

“In the ‘real world,’ the e-cigarette product landscape is highly diverse, and communications about their health effects and use for smoking cessation are inconsistent,” he said. “Most of these products do not match the nicotine delivery profile of the cigarette. Many smokers who try e-cigarettes find them insufficient at suppressing their nicotine cravings and either give them up (returning to exclusive cigarette smoking) or continue to smoke and vape.”

Given that dual users were less likely to quit in the study, Weaver even suggests there’s something unique about dual use that hinders a person’s attempts to quit, such as higher doses of nicotine.

“Or it might be the way smokers can use e-cigarettes to complement their nicotine uptake and alleviate withdrawal symptoms in situations when they cannot smoke, possibly undermining the impact of smoke-free restrictions,” Weaver added. “Some may also continue to smoke and vape under the misperception that cutting back on cigarettes is sufficient, while uncertainty and confusion about the health risks of e-cigarettes may lead to ambivalence about making a complete switch to e-cigarettes.”

Weaver doesn’t rule out the possibility that e-cigarettes could still be a cessation aid, with changes in their design as well as how they’re marketed and regulated. But even these changes might be too slow and ineffectual on their own. He points to recent efforts by the Food and Drug Administration to lower the nicotine content of traditional tobacco cigarettes as an example of a more meaningful and immediate solution.

“We can work on these [changes] while we continue to promote evidence-based policies, education campaigns, and cessation approaches that we know are effective,” he said.

Weaver and his team plan to continue studying how perceptions of smoking and e-cigarettes affect smokers’ decisions and patterns of use of e-cigarettes, as well as how smokers are reacting to newer types of e-cigarettes and possible new tobacco and e-cigarette regulations from the FDA.

[PLoS One]

The engineers at Citroën have apparently thrown almost 100 years of French design refinement out the window with a new product you don’t drive, but will improve your motoring experience. The carmaker’s new Seetroën glasses won’t win you any style points, but Citroën claims the glasses will eliminate any motion sickness you’re feeling after wearing them for just 10 minutes.

Motion sickness occurs when your brain gets conflicting reports about perceived motion from the inner ear and eyes, which each experience a ride in a moving vehicle differently. It’s not as big a problem when a passenger is looking out a window—there the sensations of motions usually properly correlate. But looking down at a phone or a tablet in a car can be a one-way ticket to barfville.

So how are these goofy glasses supposed to alleviate the problem? The frames feature something called Boarding Ring technology, developed by a company of the same name, which is marketing-talk for ‘they’re filled with liquids that are free to slosh around’. The Seetroën glasses have four liquid-filled rings that, thanks to gravity, simulate the angle and movements of the horizon so that the motions of the blue-dyed liquids seen by the wearer’s eyes match what their inner ear is detecting.

Thankfully, Citroën says, passengers don’t need to wear the Seetroën glasses for their entire trip. Once they put them on and stare at an unmoving object, like a smartphone or a book, it takes about 10 to 12 minutes for the brain to resolve its feeling of confusion and nausea. For roughly 95 percent of the population, that should be all that’s needed to eliminate motion sickness until the next time they climb into a vehicle. Citroën will be selling its Seetroën glasses via its online lifestyle store for about $115, which is considerably more expensive than a handful of ginger pills that won’t have other people on your flight pointing, snickering, and sharing covert photos of your bizarre spectacle choices on Twitter.

[Citroen via Visuall via Notcot]