Back in August, we saw the OtterSpot, a wireless charging pad system that offered both tabletop and portable charging. The RapidX MyPort is the same idea, but with a charging stand design rather than a flat pad.
Both devices aim to be the only wireless charger you’ll ever need, providing outlet-powered charging at home and power-bank charging on the move…
The Waterfield Muzetto is a gorgeous and practical bag that was originally made specifically for the iPad, and later adapted for different models, as well as for MacBooks.
I absolutely love my 12.9-inch iPad Pro. To me, it’s the perfect compromise between screen size and portability. But a larger iPad did require a larger shoulder bag — and that, and absolutely not the fact that I’m a bagaholic, was the reason for trying this one.
Waterfield is a San Francisco-based company that hand-makes the Muzetto in three different sizes, and helps you choose with a website feature absolutely all bag manufacturers should immediately copy…
If you wanted to craft the perfect PR pitch to me, you couldn’t do much better than Naucrates. I’m a bagaholic who loves gadgets, so when it offered me the chance to try its new carry-on luggage which follows you around the airport, it was impossible to resist.
Oh, and I almost forgot to mention: you can also ride on it if you prefer…
I’ve been a happy Bose QC35 Noise cancelling headphone user since the day they came out. These were the first “consumer priced” ANC headset combos and have since been matched by excellent products from Sony and Apple’s Beats brand. But Active Noise Cancellation has always come at a price. In the case of the QC35s and Sony’s, prices start at $350 retail unless you find deals.
Broski Lety sent me a pair of their new active noise cancelling headphones which are on Indiegogo now for $99 and will soon be on Amazon for 50% more. You wouldn’t be reading this if I wasn’t super-impressed… Expand Expanding Close
Peloton is a fitness firm best known for its stationary bikes equipped with touchscreens for live and on-demand video workout classes. The seven-year-old American company, which launched its IPO in September, doesn’t just serve cyclists though.
Peloton Tread serves walkers and runners alike, and Peloton Digital for iPhone and iPad lets you experience even more workout courses — even if you don’t have stationary bike or treadmill from Peloton. My whole family has been testing the full Peloton system over the last six weeks. Read on for our experience starting with Peloton Digital for iPhone and iPad.
Any self-respecting bicycle owner with a gadget habit will have at least considered a GPS bike tracker. But the options to date haven’t been overly practical.
GPS signals are weak, and battery life is limited, meaning that it’s not practical to hide them inside a bicycle frame. So the first problem is where to put one so that it can receive fixes and is easy to charge.
A second problem is that, by time most alert you, they are on the move and it will be too late to prevent the theft, only allowing you to track it after the event…
Sonos announced its first portable speaker with Bluetooth, the Sonos Move, earlier this month and opened up preorders, with the product shipping out to customers on September 24. I was able to test out the Sonos Move over the last week and have been really impressed with everything from the speaker’s design and functionality to automatic Trueplay equalizer and sound quality. Read on for our full Sonos Move review.
Apple Watch Series 5 is here with an always-on display and newly added compass, but Apple’s $200 entry level model is worth a serious look for buyers on a budget. Apple Watch Series 3 matches the new Fitbit Versa 2 in price while offering much deeper iPhone integration.
We all know that the UltraFine displays from LG are some of the best out there for those looking for a high-end Mac display, but if you’re looking for something more tailored for graphic design or a display with more port flexibility, the 27-inch 4K BenQ Thunderbolt 3 display is worth looking into. Expand Expanding Close
Logitech has now officially unveiled the latest generation of its popular MX lineup. Today’s announcement delivers the new MX Master 3 wireless mouse and MX Keys wireless keyboard. Building on its strong tradition of customization and ergonomic design, Logitech’s third-generation goes heavy on premium materials and software upgrades. That includes button-specific actions on a per-app basis, which is sure to excite loyal customers looking to take productivity to a whole new level and full-on adoption of USB-C.
I have been able to try out both the new MX Master 3 and MX Keys for nearly a week now. Initial returns are positive for this long-time Logitech user, but small tweaks on the surface may leave some hesitant to upgrade.
A quick play this week with NeuralCam suggested it might be in with a shot of being the best iPhone camera app for night shots — but I needed to put that to the test.
I did a comparison with five other camera apps — including the stock one — to see how each fared with two different types of night shot…
Update: I have since heard of a number of backers who have not received their monitors, and would therefore not recommend purchasing.
The BladeX Pro 4K portable monitor is similar to the Gemini I reviewed earlier in the year, though from a different brand: Odake.
It has quite a lot in common with the Gemini. It’s again battery-powered, for truly mobile use. The display is still 15.6 inches, and you again get a choice of a 1080p touchscreen version and a 4K model without touchscreen capability. You still get both USB-C and HDMI input, though Mini DisplayPort has been dropped.
But the BladeX has a sleeker design. Instead of the entire device being a half-inch thick, the display is now less than a fifth of an inch thick. The base is still a half-inch thick when folded, so you don’t really get any portability benefit, but there’s no denying the visual appeal of the far slimmer design…
A wireless phone charger isn’t the most obvious product from a company best-known for SD cards. But the SanDisk iXpand isn’t just a dumb charger: it also backs up your iPhone’s photos, videos, and contacts.
You might still question the product. After all, iCloud automatically backs up all three things anyway, and you can still do an iTunes backup if you don’t want to fork out for a paid iCloud storage tier. My own view, though, is you can never have too many backups — especially fully-automatic ones — and I’ll return to this point in the conclusions…
After my 20-year-old garage door opener decided to kick the bucket, I asked a friend to install a new opener. The LiftMaster WLED Elite Series garage door opener that I opted for includes built-in Wi-Fi, allowing it to connect to my home network without the help of any additional hardware.
By itself, the Wi-Fi-enabled opener can talk to the MyQ smartphone app, allowing users to open and close the overhead door remotely via the app. More important for those engrossed in the HomeKit ecosystem, however, is direct support for the MyQ Home Bridge hardware.
The MyQ Home Bridge acts as a liaison between HomeKit and the overhead door opener, allowing you to control a garage door via Siri or the Home app on your iOS device.
Is the MyQ Home Bridge a worthwhile investment if you have a capable garage door opener? Watch our hands-on video for the details.
Whether it’s your daily carry or a longer trip, Apple accessories can quickly become troublesome to keep organized and easily accessible. Native Union’s Stow Organizer is designed specifically with Apple users in mind to tame your cables, dongles, power adapters, and more. It even has Apple Pencil storage and a zippered interior pocket for small items like SD cards and flash drives. Read on for a closer look at this handy Apple accessory organizer.
Over the past month, I’ve used the Sony’s poorly-named but pretty incredible WF-1000XM3 wireless earbuds for gym workouts (recommended) and bike rides (at your own risk). These $228 earbuds fall between Apple’s $159AirPods and $259PowerBeats Pro but offer something both don’t: active noise cancellation.
In fact, I reviewed the PowerBeats Pro last month and thought I was done with my search for the perfect wireless earbuds. Turns out I was wrong…
When Philips Hue first announced its line of outdoor smart lighting back at CES 2018, I was immediately intrigued. I was on-hand for the demo in Las Vegas and saw an answer to a problem that has seemingly plagued my outdoor spaces for years. There are plenty of lighting solutions for gardens and outdoor areas but most are clunky and unrefined. I’ve leaned on outdoor-grade smart plugs each Christmas for a while, but those lack the integrated dimming controls that are often best suited for landscape lighting.
The Philips Hue outdoor line arrived on the scene with an answer in-hand, and a hefty price tag to match. But what I found was a refined solution that met the needs of my burgeoning HomeKit setup while highlighting the unique architectural aspects of my home, which you can learn more about below.
The Babel fish is small, yellow, leech-like – and probably the oddest thing in the universe. It feeds on brain wave energy, absorbing all unconscious frequencies and then excreting telepathically a matrix formed from the conscious frequencies and nerve signals picked up from the speech centres of the brain, the practical upshot of which is that if you stick one in your ear, you can instantly understand anything said to you in any form of language: the speech you hear decodes the brain wave matrix.
With automated translation services and devices, we’re getting steadily closer to that dream. But with Google Translate available on our iPhone, is there any place for a dedicated translation gadget like Langogo?
If you’re looking for an easy-to-use bus-powered 10-Gigabit Ethernet solution for Mac, then Sonnet’s Solo 10G Thunderbolt 3 adapter may fit the bill. This portable unit affords quick connections to high-speed networks via a single Thunderbolt 3 cable. Watch our hands-on Sonnet Solo 10G video review for the details. Expand Expanding Close
Last week Apple pushed out a couple of updates to the entry-level MacBook Pro and the MacBook Air. The MacBook Air update included a new lower $1099 starting price along with True Tone Display support.
The MacBook Air update was nice, but the refresh to the entry-level MacBook Pro, which hasn’t received an update since 2017, was far more compelling. The new entry-level MacBook model comes with refreshed internals, Touch Bar and Touch ID support, and features the same $1299 base price.
Touch Bar support is nice, but the most impressive thing about this refresh is its speed, thanks large in part to the 8th-generation quad-core CPU that replaces the dual-core CPU on the previous iteration. The update makes the entry-level MacBook Pro well worth considering, even for those who felt the previous model was too underpowered for their needs.
Watch our hands-on video walkthrough inside for the details.
Earlier this week the iPod touch received a modest upgrade, arriving with little fanfare via an Apple press release. The new 7th-generation iPod touch has little in the way of new features, but it does receive a CPU spec-bump that takes it from an iPhone 6-era Apple A8 to an iPhone 7-era A10 Fusion chip, not to mention double the RAM of the previous generation.
The new hardware upgrades make it so that iPod touch users can enjoy Augmented Reality (AR) apps along with Group FaceTime capability for the first time. There’s also a new 256 GB flash storage tier, another first for the iPod lineup. It means that in 2019, there’s finally an iPod that bests the 160GB iPod Classic in terms of storage space.
While the iPod touch isn’t the mass market item that earlier members of the product line once were, Apple believes that there continues to be a viable audience for such a device. Not only is it ideal for storing large music libraries locally, but with the upcoming launch of the new Apple Arcade subscription gaming service, Apple continues to position the iPod touch as a handheld gaming option.
All of that said, should you consider buying this new iPod touch? Watch our hands-on video review for the details. Expand Expanding Close
In light of the ongoing keyboard issues, it would be all too easy to criticize Apple for releasing yet another MacBook with a slightly-modified butterfly key switch design. The criticism is well-deserved given the history of the keyboard issues, but I also think it’s worth looking at the positive aspects of this release.
Just because its brand new fully-redesigned MacBook Pro hardware with a rethought keyboard isn’t ready, doesn’t mean that Apple has left the existing MacBook Pro lineup to stagnate — something it would have had no problem allowing to happen in the past. Instead, Apple continues to issue updates as they become available from key partners.
The robot vacuum cleaner market is a pretty crowded one these days, so the Roborock S5 attempts to stand out by going one better: it doesn’t just vacuum your floors, it also mops them.
I was already sold on the concept of robot vacuum cleaners, having been seriously impressed by the Neato Botvac D7 Connected which I reviewed last year. We have it set on a schedule to vacuum the apartment at 8am every weekday, and it does a great job.
But I was unsure whether a robot with a small water tank could really do a good job of mopping the floors …
