This month's cover story is a bit of a departure for PC Magazine. We spend most of our resources helping readers choose, use, and get the most from technology products. But when Contributing Editor William Fenton told me he was going to be visiting Cuba and wanted to write about how the citizens of that remarkably isolated country were getting online, it was an offer I couldn't refuse. And when President Obama announced not long after that he, too, would soon be visiting Cuba—the first sitting United States president to do so in nearly 90 years—we knew that we'd made the right choice (and that we'd better get to work).

Will spent a week in Cuba, staying in casas particulares and asking Cubans how they use technology. His story brims with broken stereotypes and stories of incredible ingenuity. To my surprise, smartphones are relatively common on the island, as are iPads, MacBooks, and computers in general. Evidently, a lot of the people there have "a friend in Miami," so the supply of hardware is relatively plentiful. The same cannot be said of Internet access itself, which remains rare, expensive, and painfully slow.

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Public Wi-Fi hotspots are the fastest way to get a connection in Cuba, but don't expect to find one by accident—there are only about 65 of them in the entire country. Logging on requires a paid ticket, and during the busiest hours the connections slow to a crawl. Even so, the parks and open spaces where Wi-Fi can be accessed have become a common meeting ground for Cubans of all ages.

Make no mistake, the Internet in Cuba is not exactly free. In addition to the high cost and limited access, services like WhatsApp, Skype, and YouTube are banned, and many political sites simply don't work. What's more, there's a pervasive sense that the government is always watching what happens online. Regardless of how sophisticated the Cuba's intelligence services are, citizens certainly have reason to be concerned.

To get around closed Internet access, Cubans pass around "El Paquete," aka The Package. A hard drive containing a miniature version of last week's Internet, it's loaded with classified ads, entertainment magazines, and YouTube videos. Like the Internet itself, a resourceful people is routing around broken infrastructure.

Of course, this issue is loaded with groundbreaking products as well. The FitBit Blaze is, in my opinion, one of the best-looking and most feature-rich fitness trackers on the market. Our analyst, Timothy Torres, is less impressed, but you can read his full review to see his reasoning. Our drone analyst, Jim Fisher, is far more psyched about the DJI Phantom 4, quite possibly the best drone you can buy for $1,400. And I personally want to use the new Razer Blade Stealth as my work system. Check out Matthew Buzzi's review and you'll probably feel the same.

With any luck, all of these products will soon be available in Cuba as well.