GadgetSpeak Articles
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Sometimes people snort at me our product is not a gadget, I say fine, define to me what a gadget is, while they are thinking I add would you disagree with the statement ‘something to make a task easier’ I have yet to have anyone disagree with that statement. Certainly this item from the King of USB Brando certainly keeps you cooler in hot weather and saves the need to move your hand and say a newspaper back and forward over your face.
Yes this is a battery powered powerful fan and it has three different speeds. It is 15cm tall, 7.5cm wide at the fan end and 6cm wide at the handle end, 2.5cm thick at the fan end and 1cm thick at the handle end. The total weight is 81 grams. The fan enclosure has seven curved blades and the maximum entry point is .5cm so even the smallest finger cannot get in.
When you need to draw power from a bank, a Varta product could help.
It has been said on more than one occasion, and will probably be said many more times, by myself, that power bank units come in a range of sizes, charging options and capacities. You just need to balance your current and future needs of your lifestyle with the price being asked for your favourite shape, weight and size of product to suit your pocket. For example lets take a look at the next power bank product which comes from the Varta catalogue of power delivering offerings.
As we grow order most will notice that they have to say ‘pardon’ far more often and that people mumble far more – or at least we think that they do – however hearing loss is a factor everyone has to face so what if anything can be done. In my own case I have Tinnitus – a ringing in the ears – which makes discerning speech when several are speaking in the same room near impossible.
This is a set of Bluetooth earbuds but while they can be used quite successfully to listen to music I would not say that is there main purpose. Like most recent products they work with an App downloadable from either the iOS or Android store. A simple hearing test conducted in the App will show/notify/horrify you of the amount of hearing loss you are suffering.
External drives are useful but they do need a layer of protection such as that provided by encryption.
Nowadays when it comes to the time than selecting a hard drive for storing valuable data is called for, yes there is the Cloud but this is not everybody's favourite storage location, we could be considered as being rather spoilt for choice. I can still remember struggling to decide whether I could manage with a 100 MB drive or stretch my budget to afford going larger with a 200 MB unit (and the capacity is not a typing mistake).
Hard to get places can be accessed with this item, and if something metallic like say a ring has got out of reach then this small unit has a magnetic end to attract and before you capture it you can locate it with its LED light on the end.
One word in the title had me thinking this had a motor that word was ‘Vac’. It is actually a brush and the brushes holder is another brush which also has sticky Velcro sides. For good measure the end of the outside container is also a larger version of the small brush, in both cases the bristles are 3cm long meaning they can delve into crevices. The larger unit is 19cm long 7cm wide and 5cm tall, this has grippy Velcro on either side and a round brush bar on the underside.
While some Tower and Desktop systems still have 5.25 inch drive bays I have recently seen some who only support 2.5 inch bays rather the norm of 3.5 inch bays. So this latest offering from Toshiba is most likely to be used in a NAS (network attached storage) solution.
I am sure there must be boxed versions of this product but mine arrived in ‘drive only’ silvered envelope so all you get inside the envelope is the drive, not even the screws required to attach it to whatever you connect it to. It is 14.4x10x2.4cm and is marked as a surveillance unit. I replaced a smaller capacity drive in my NAS with this and let the special software in the NAS format it and it then was ready to use.
While Vodafone sell all the major brands of phones they also do their own range of phones designed and tested to work on the Vodafone network. Here I am looking at their latest offering the Vodafone Smart V10 that will not cost nearly as much as certain recent review items.
The Vodafone Smart V10 measures 15x7x.8cm and it weighs 147grams. The viewable screen is 13.7x6.5cm which gives notional diagonal imperial measurement of 5.9 inches; the screen display is 1560x720 which is 19:9. The selfie camera is a notch in the centre of the top of the screen. The front is shiny black and the sides and back are chrome colour. Going around the unit has the on/off rocker towards the top of the right side with the on/off button just below in a contrast red colour.
This 24inch touch panel can be used as any other panel landscape when vertical but also at any point through 90 degrees of tilt till it is landscape horizontal and with its always attached stand it remains totally stable in any position.
While I have reviewed over touch panels before that enable any computer – via USB lead – to become a touch computer this offering works just as well in the normal near vertical (landscape) position as it does horizontal just by pushing the panel back on its stand to a -90 degree position or indeed any amount in between vertical and horizontal and it is rock solid however you use it. The screen on this Philips panel measures 54x33x1.
If you want a SmartPhone that can offer almost everything that the latest super offerings can do but at a lower price then this unit from Honor may well tick all the boxes. A lot of recent phones are sold on the cameras capabilities and this one has AI built in.
The Honor 20 Lite measures 15.3x7.2x.7cm and weighs 165grams while the viewable screen is 14.3x6.6cm and that gives the notional diagonal imperial measurement of just over 6.2inches. The pixel resolution is 2340x1080 but you can lower this in settings to 1560x720 if you need to save battery. Talking about battery the 3440mAh battery should last well into the second day even for a heavy user, it supports 10w fast charging.
It been a while since I have reviewed a camera that can fit in your pocket, of course most recent SmartPhones have better than average cameras but I do not know any that can shoot underwater as this latest offering from Olympus can.
While it was clearly marked sample and it was just the camera no leads and most importantly no manual, I was able to download the manual sometime later and this helped me to fill in some of the things that the camera is capable of that I was unable to figure out without it. I defy most to get anything like the best from this unit without a thorough read of the 168 pages of the manual.
If like me the place where your door bell lives is quite a thin door surround then this latest offering from Ring may just solve the problem as it is that much thinner than earlier versions of their doorbell with the camera to allow you to see who is calling so if it is someone you don’t want to see just stay in your seat and ignore the ring.
Of course if you are not in their ring on your bell is notified with video to your SmartPhone and then you can say sorry I can’t come to the door at the moment to get rid of a suspicious character or if it’s that courier that you have waited in for during the previous two days you can make arrangement for redelivery or better still ask him to leave it with your neighbour. It is 11.5x4.5x2cm.
Gamers, who are on the move, could enjoy this next piece of kit.
The manufacturers of smartphones tend to show their "smarts" by adding to the feature sets of their handsets. Improvements are being made to issues that relate to the unit's size, weight, biometric security and the image capturing facilities as dual lenses are now considered the standard rather then the exception. However there is one area that many brands of smartphones seem to have ignored. This is that of gaming capabilities.
The Salter Loud Electronic Timer model 355BKKR will suit those who work in noisy kitchens or are hard of hearing and so have difficulty in hearing other timers.
The old style mechanical kitchen timers, of which there are still plenty around, make a loud noise but are not very accurate. They have generally given way to electronic timers which are very accurate but, in many cases, are not very loud. The Salter Loud Timer, which will count up or down digitally to 19 hours, 59 minutes & 59 seconds, is both electronic and loud – but with a slide switch to enable one to select lower volume options.
The Playbrush SMART is a product design to make the task of cleaning teeth to be fun and more appealing to young children.
Developed by Signal, a company better known to me for its toothpaste offerings, this Playbrush SMART product consists of a blue and white stand with a built-in rechargeable battery unit, short USB lead for use when charging the battery and a cartoon decorated, plastic envelope-type holder with a pair of wall sucker attachments. for holding a smartphone, plus what appears, at first glance, to be a standard manually operated toothbrush.
It’s unusual for recent SmartPhone launches to be made without review product being available, on one such recent launch I was told ‘next week’ and it has still not arrived, and here in the case of the Honor 20 it was nearly six weeks but it was launched just after a rant by Donald Trump against this phones parent company, still it has now arrived to receive tests over a very short two week timeframe.
Most phones that arrive come with a Getting Started guide, not so here.
Vizio dips its toe into the UK marketplace with the launch of one of its sound bar systems.
Already established as a leading player in the US marketplace, VIZIO is currently girding its loins for the company's entry into the UK in partnership with Exertis, a UK and EU distributor. For those not too familiar with VIZIO, I should explain that the company was founded in California in 2002 with the stated aim to produce an industry-leading brand of products that include televisions, sound bars and other devices.
Recently my review of an 8th Generation Kindle was published and it was something I had not seen for a number of versions. Here another such items a Fire Tablet which I see – over the years - I had tried three previous versions, now it comes with Alexa built in so it is possible to talk to your Tablet. So what exactly has been happening with the Fire Tablet recently?
The Fire 7 tablet from Amazon measures 19x11.4x1cm and weighs 288 grams. The viewable screen is 9x15.2cm which gives the diagonal imperial measurement of 7inches. A full charge via trickle charge is 3½ hours boot up is 20 seconds and shutdown is 3 seconds. Going around the outside has the micro USB slot on the right side, the base is clear; the right side has the speaker near the base. The top has volume up and down buttons, 3.
Having carried out some spring cleaning, you may be able to say "Yes" to the next question.
Do you have enough room for a cabinet in your home? I am not referring to the type of cabinet you would use to display your awards, of which I am sure you have plenty, or your collection of knick-knacks.
With its full page adverts in National Daily Newspapers and television adverts, Gtech is known for pushing the boundaries associated with various product offerings.
I was fortunate enough to attend the launch of Gtech's latest product which was billed as being the world's smallest high-performance vacuum cleaner. This is the Gtech Hylite vacuum cleaner. The product was supplied to all those to attendees packed within a black soft pouch bag for easy transport. The product came with a disposable bag already in position just in case any energetic journalist was keen to start cleaning the biscuit crumbs that had gathered around their chair.
This is one supplier who kept their promise to send samples of their items for me to review from my visit to the annual Housewares show in London. So here a microwave rice steamer and a larger than normal storage box with or without inset basket.
It is 14cm tall and almost square at 20cm wide it weighs 315 grams. The attached cardboard wrapper describes this as a 2.7 litre rice and grain cooker suitable for up to four people. The receipt book inside the container goes into detail about fish and chicken dishes as well but they seem to be for other items in the same range. Looking closely at the impressed characters on the base of the container has it suitable to use up to 140 degrees Celsius and as low as -18 degrees Celsius.
As another year passes, I take a look at the latest version of an old friend
I first came across this next product, entitled PC TuneUp Utilities, some ten years ago when the product was available as Shareware (a try before you buy method of marketing). With our relationship, between the reviewer and software product, spreading over a decade, or as near as makes no difference, I do feel I can regard PC TuneUp Utilities as an old friend. After all friends are allowed to move around between owners as happened with TuneUp Utilities.
Some files and documents are important or perhaps even more valuable than that, if you run a business they could mean getting a contract – or not – if the information they contain fell into the hands of your competitors, so knowing who sees what is vital. This tool from Yubico means only those in possession of the USB key do see the encrypted data, no need for special passwords just the USB key.
For those who want more these keys can be used as a second level of protection as well as standard passwords and even as a third level with ‘Two Factor’ and ‘Multi Factor’. The keys can work with standard USB, USB ‘C’ and even NFC (near field) most prevalent with SmartPhones. FIDO 2 support is now standard with the YubiKey 5 & 5C.
The Salter electric knife sharpener is easy to use and provides an effective way of putting a good edge on one’s straight-edge kitchen knives.
Developed by Anewiki & RetroStyle, Animal Drop Safari is a game that belongs to the Match 3 genre.
Unlike more recent examples of this genre that I have checked out recently, Animal Drop Safari uses a more basic interface appearance with larger clearly identified tiles displaying coloured heads of popular cuddly, animal toys. The game involves making matches of three or more tiles of the same colour need to be created by swapping two adjacent tiles. You are cast in the role of a photographer's assistance who sets off on a wild expedition around the world.
PopSockets add to its range of smartphone accessories.
For a number of years now I have been a regular sufferer from back pain brought on by a disk lesion forming part of my spine. According to certain members of my family, this condition has not been helped by the amount of junk (their description, certainly not mine) I pack into my jacket pockets. I have, of course, a different opinion.
This camera can work indoors or outdoors, possible advantages of the ‘battery’ version over the ‘wired’ version is that you do not need to drill a hole through an external wall; another is that if placed on a shelf it is quickly relocatable.
The camera is round at 6cm and is 9cm tall; if you use the fitted stand this will add 2cm to the overall height and depth. Apart from sitting on a shelf or fitment it can be attached to a wall or ceiling and almost anything else as the stand can be twisted and turned to virtually any angle. However if you are using this battery version of the camera outside be aware that the battery does need to be removed to be recharged so sighting must be a consideration.
With the subject of pollution being a hot topic, perhaps it is time to consider water purification.
"Water, water everywhere and not a drop to drink" is the opening stanza of a song sung by Tommy Steele in a film that was mean to represent the early stages of his life as a pop singer. Fortunately there is a ready supply of this life supporting liquid for us to intake. That is if you are prepared up put up with the impurities that water supplier feel is a required addition and whose removal does not form part of their remit.
I must be getting old as I remember the very first Kindle. These days so many people are reading them on the bus or train, what you rarely see is a real book being read. The kindle of course has a huge advantage over a book be it hardback or paperback in that they weigh even less and for good measure you do not have to turn over the corner of a page it knows where you got to.
The latest iteration on the Kindle e-book reader measures 16x11x.8cm and weighs 168 grams. The viewable screen is 11.2x9.2cm. At the default font size this can show 20 lines of text with the addition of percentage of book read and other information below this. This Kindles display is 6 inches from corner to corner.
Worcester Bosch has launched a new range of domestic wall-hung boilers, the Greenstar 8000 Lifestyle range to replace the 14 year old CDi Classic series
Following on from 4 years involvement by the UK team, in addition to the efforts of the Bosch team in Stuttgart, the new products are a major redesign and aimed at being more efficient as well as being easy to install and maintain. The boilers have outputs ranging from 30 to 50kW and are available in combi, system and regular versions so that there will generally be a unit that will meet most domestic needs.
Developed by Big Fish Games, Labyrinths of the World – The Devil’s Tower pits the player against a vengeful god on a mission of destruction in this Hidden Object Adventure game.
In this game it is up to you to defeat an army from another world under the leadership of the god and save your world from the forces of evil. I have been checking out the Collectors edition of this game which features a number of bonus items, some of which only become available after progress has been made in the main game.
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