Reviews related to : Accessories
With power in your pocket, you can travel freely without worrying about loosing contact with everybody.
If you have power then you should be ready to go but, unfortunately, power is not always readily available at your fingertips when you need it. News has just reached me that UGREEN, a company established to provide revolution hardware and digital solutions, have come up with a couple of devices that could help ease maters when power if not immediately available. This solution from UGREEN comes in the form of two devices offering magnetic power bank facilities of different capacities.
Technology can help keep an eye on your child through the use of technology.
The NickWatch, as its title might indicate, is a watch which doubles as a time piece, monitoring device and source of entertainment. This product has been developed by the Israeli start-up company named, not surprisingly, Watchinu (try saying it). Designed under a licence agreement with the popular children's brand of Nickelodeon, Watchinu feels the product should be suitable for the younger members of society aged between six and nine years.
While good quality modern SmartPhones can take excellent videos and images they do need some help first a good quality Gimbal as however steady your hand may be a Gimbal makes all movements smooth. Second lights unless you are outside on a bright sunny day you need help and here Zhiyun has a range of offerings light enough for a single person to setup and still be able to take the images.
This offering called X100 Pro not only has the light itself but all the extras you are likely to need for a range of differing uses. The X100 itself weighs only 385g. You can of course just purchase the light but some of the ‘extras’ are things most people will need like a Diffuser. The actual light is 14.5x9.5x3cm, the light itself is circular at 8.5cm. It comes in a padded zip up container 25x22x12.5cm which also contains a charger and a battery, leads and a diffuser.
Whether at work or at play, a comfortable position can help you perform to your best.
News has just reached me regarding the launch of a product from Boulies, the UK based premium office and gaming chair specialist. This announcement concerns the arrival of its latest series of ultra-comfortable chairs for both gaming and office use. Consisting of two series, these new offerings form the Elite Series, which is considered perfect for gaming and entertainment, and the award winning FIT Series.
This is the latest Gimbal from Zhiyun. It comes in a solid fitted zip up case with the parts easily accessible. In facts the only assembly required is attaching the tripod to the base of the handle for those times that you use it remotely. The whole Gimbal has a very solid construction and feel in your hand.
The Smooth 5S Combo gimbal from Zhiyun measures 31cm from the handle base to the top of your mobile phone. At the widest point near your phone it is 16cm. Its total weight in your hand is 471grams – without your phone – and the rubber grip at the lower 9cm of the grip has a great feel. There is a 16x12cm Quick Start Guide that has six pages of information in each of 14 languages. There is also an A5 sheet that describes all the controls.
In a lot of cases you want more volume than is available, either because something was recorded at a low level or you are in a noisy environment. Often increasing the volume will also increase static and other things you don’t want. The solution can often be as easy as playing through a DAC as this gives you what you want more volume as well as clarity of sound.
Adjusting the working height of a laptop has never been easier with the aid of this next product.
Usually, when reviewing a product for use on a computer system, whether hardware or software, I tend to use my main desktop system as the base platform. But sometimes this is not possible due to various circumstances. A recent example of this situation was the arrival of the Curve Flex from Twelve South, a company that designs and manufactures Apple accessories.
With so much more video being produced out of studio one thing needed is lights even a well-lit room does not look top notch so this solution from Zhiyun could well help solve it. During lockdown a great deal of meetings moved to online from home where ordinary room lighting did not hack it. The doughnut ring light was popular but is there something better like this Fiveray offering to give you professional standard lighting from a single internal battery powered unit.
It is 50cm tall and 4cm wide and 3.5cm thick except at the handle where its 4cm. It weighs 900 grams. There is a tripod mount on the base. Just above the grip on the left side is a USB ‘C’ connector to charge its internal battery. The back of the grip is rubberised for ease of holding. The only other item to mention is the 7x3cm area on the face of the grip, this has a joystick ‘control centre’ and a small 2x1.
This is the latest in a range of Gimbals from Zhiyun. It has the ability to expand its length and even an attachment that enables image background fills so the Smooth Q4 Combo is far more than just a camera Gimbal be it used hand held or with the supplied tripod to enable you to control it remotely from a second SmartPhone.
While its default length is 28cm attaching the tripod to the end of the grip can give you another 13cm of length, when the tripod is opened this is only 3cm. However for serious extra length in the arm the top manually expands by up to another 22cm so you should be able to get clear images or videos over even the tallest people. It comes in a hard zip up padded case; the items in the case are the Gimbal and the tripod.
Up till now all the camera gimbals I have looked at were designed for SmartPhones either for direct use or in one case to control a second phone remotely in the gimbal. Here a much larger and more robust offering that can be used with DSLR offerings and most likely by semiprofessionals looking to produce output for others to see and use.
The whole unit arrived in a padded carrying case and weighted a not insubstantial 1.6 kilos. While it can still handle a SmartPhone this is really designed for far weightier items such as DSLR cameras. The full title of the product is ‘ZHIYUN Crane M2S Combo [Official] 3-Axis Handheld Stabilizer, Gimbal Stabilizer for Mirrorless Camera, Gopro, Smartphone with Cell Phone Clamp, Bag.’ A not insubstantial title but when you break it down it is an accurate description.
While a Gimbal can give you smooth movement when hand held it is possible to get even smoother movement if you use the tripod provided attached to the Gimbal and control the movements of it even from a second phone so the Gimbal on the tripod just needs a firm footing to achieve results even professionals will admire.
The Zhiyan Smooth XS Gimbal has a minimum of 30cm from the base of the grip handle to the top of your landscaped phone, this can increase by up to another 25cm by extending the units arm, so 55cm should enable you to capture video above the tallest person, even then the unfurled tripod could give you another 13cm so now you have a possible 68cm.
A gimbal was something that gave professional camera people the ability to capture video smoothly whilst they were on the move, now SmartPhones capture such good movies they also need Gimbals so that you and me can also move while capturing movies and in a way they need to be better as we amateurs are not used to moving while capturing images.
This offering from Zhiyun is called the Smooth-Q3 is not only a very comprehensive Gimbal but has an arm that can also be a tripod; it also has an added light that can improve what you capture in low light conditions. In the box is a padded zip up case that contains the collapsed Gimbal the arm that can be used either as a Gimbal extension useful for seeing over others as it can give you another 12.5cm of height or as mentioned as a tripod as its three legs splay out to form a tripod.
When normality returns, and we can move about at will, the next product could be a useful aid.
While this is box that things can be stored in I do not think it describes it very well. Most will use it while sitting or lying in bed and it can support your Tablet at an angle and still leave you able to write or type on the top of the box without things moving around, it you like it’s a third hand.
The other word in the title ‘felt’ to me does not describe the moulded base and sides while they are felt my feelings make felt a soft substance that moves and this is solid. It is 36x24.5cm at the top and 33x21cm at the base, it is 7.5cm deep. My review period of it overlapped while I was reviewing the Samsung Tab S7 one of the Tablets along with various iPads mentioned in the instructions that came with the item.
With a name that reminds me of a lighter, this next product combines two functions.
Sometimes the arrival of a product for review coincides with the ideal circumstances.Take for instance when a printer appears when I have a shed load of documents that need printing or a memory card turns up as my smartphone is pleading "feed me, feed me" as it needs more storage space to hold the content I am attempting to cram into it.However, as you could well imagine, this is not always the case as can be seen with this next product.
Here I am ensconced in self-isolation in order to avoid coronavirus, looking at a product from MenKind.
It has to be noticed that several years, actually a full decade, had passed since I last reviewed a MenKind product that went by the name of Dave the Monkey. Sad to say, I was unable to locate Dave the Monkey on the company's website. However I do have the company's 3in1 Smart Viewer to occupy my time during the period of self-isolation.
A recent message from Trend Micro revealed how the company has been kept busy due to an increase in certain Internet activity.
It has to be noticed that several years, actually a full decade, had passed since I last reviewed a MenKind product that went by the name of Dave the Monkey. Sad to say, I was unable to locate Dave the Monkey on the company's website. However I do have the company's 3in1 Smart Viewer to occupy my time during the period of self-isolation.
If you work on a laptop and suffer from back problems, this product may help to ease the strain
While perhaps not as popular or well-known as LOL, OMG, WTF, SUP, IMO or JK especially if you are a compulsive texter who regards abbreviations as their second language, MOFT might cause you a few moments of thought as you attempt to translate this abbreviation, I will excuse some grey matter exercise by explaining that MOFT stands for "Mobile Office for Travelers" and is the name of the company responsible for this product under review.
This is an aluminium alloy mouse mat (Mousepad) but apart from controlling your mouse it lets you get extra USB ports via lead supplied as well as a Gigabit Ethernet port and both SD and Micro SD ports. So your notebook – even USB ‘C’ only now has standard USB3 and more on tap. I am told it also works with MacBooks.
The 21cm square mouse mat has a 6cm angled up extension at the back that has all the ports at the rear, the metal will not scratch the surface it is placed on as it has a grippy leather style base that also stops the pad moving. Two short leads of 15cm long each are supplied the first USB3 to USB3, second USB3 to USB ‘C’ so it does not matter if the port from the PC/Notebook/Tablet is full sized USB or USB ‘C’. My unit was silver but it is also available in grey.
Those old enough to remember manual typewriters will know that you had a good rake on the keys so your hands were always in the right position to type. Desktop computer keyboards less so but if you used the fold out keyboard support correctly there was still some rake, now sadly notebooks have flat keyboards, here is one solution.
This is a single flat sheet that is already partially cut through and pressed out to form a shape – well three shapes actually – that can either sit flat onto the back of your notebook increasing its thickness by less than .2 cm and raising it by zero degrees or by 15 degrees which can give a 5cm rake, finally it can raise the unit by 25 degrees which is around 8cm all this depends on the size of the notebook you attach it to. It fits any notebook from 11.6 to 15.6 inches.
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