Reviews of all the latest gadgets and technology
I recently reviewed the Twinkly Flex, and Line smart LED lights. I came away impressed; while the overall system wasn’t quite as refined as Philips Hue, it excelled at creativity with the option to map your lights and group them together and create custom lighting patterns. While there may be plenty of competing smart LED…
The Redmi Smart Band Pro was announced at the end of October and is one of the few Redmi products to be available in the UK. The smart band shares a lot in common with the Xiaomi Mi Band 6, with Redmi being a sub-brand of Xiaomi. Specification Design / Features vs Xiaomi Mi Band…
I have reviewed most if not all the new Reolink cameras this year, and the new WiFi RLC-523WA is one of the more interesting (though the 8MP POE RLC-823A is more my cup of tea). This crams in all the tech we have seen from Reolink in the past year, including object detection and spotlights…
Three years ago, Qualcomm invited me to London to learn more about Windows on Arm and the new Snapdragon 835 Mobile PC Platform, and I later reviewed one of the first Windows on Arm devices, the HP Envy X2. It was an adventurous move by Qualcomm. ARM-based chips don’t natively run x86 applications, so they…
The Vissles LP85 optical-mechanical is a 75% ultra-slim keyboard that comes with both Windows and Mac layouts. The slim chicklet design with a Mac layout make this an ideal alternative to the Apple Magic Keyboard, and in my case, it is a superb keyboard to use while travelling. This keyboard is a Kickstart project, but…
With the growth of streaming and working from home, demand for decent quality microphones has boomed in the past year. I have reviewed a few good microphones in the past year, and the new Roccat Torch is the most affordable of them all. Specification / Features Sample/Bit Rate: 48kHz, 24-bit with optional selection for 44.1kHz…
I have reviewed a few affordable projectors now, some full-sized like this, others mini or even pico. In general, you get what you pay for with this kind of thing. All of the projectors I have reviewed have been acceptable, but they quite frequently have low Lux levels, meaning you need a dark room to…
Photography is not my forte, which is quite apparent from many of my product photos. Things have improved over the years, a half-decent mirrorless camera helps. More often than not, I find myself using the Pixel 6 for most product shots, it takes consistently good photos that require minimal editing. Good lighting is often a…
Update for November 2021 – Black Friday 2021 Offers I have also updated review counts, scores and pricing. Trust pilot have switched the scoring system to out of 5 to match their stars Black Friday offers are now live with £125 off Nectar, up to 35% off with Simba and 35% off Emma While mattresses…
I recently reviewed the Jackery Solar Generator 500, which consisted of both the Jackery 500 and SolarSaga 100W solar panel. It was my first foray into portable power stations, and I came away very impressed. My main criticism of it was the reasonably poor selection of USB ports which were limited to 12W USB-A. Of…
November 2021 Update highlights: Black Friday deals added Originally, this post focussed on Amazon reviews as a key factor in the decision to recommend systems. However, Amazon, and companies that use it, keep messing around with things, merging products, having multiple products on one page etc. Then reviews themselves are not always reliable. 2021 Black…
Network Attached Storage (NAS) may be the preferable solution for many people, but Direct Attached Storage (DAS) storage offers improved and more reliable throughput, especially with Thunderbolt 3, which is capable of 40 Gbps with daisy-chaining. Most people don’t work directly from their mounted NAS drives, but you will from a DAS drive, and this…