Homes and Gardens

Laundry is something everyone does and like most people I tend to buy one of the advertised brands here is something different that could be the answer, it starts by costing less than most, and assuming it gets things clean and without irritation then for me its well on the way to being on my shopping list.

Freshly ground coffee then gives your coffee machine machine the best chance to give you that excellent feeling normally only achievable from a first rate coffee shop. While it is advantageous to have freshly cooked beans, it is more important to have freshly ground beans, hence the coffee shop grinds while you wait.

As we get older one thing that normally happens is that your hearing will deteriorate. Possibly turning the TV volume up will help but that has other side effects like not always hearing your doorbell, here is one solution from RISWOND.

A lot of money is spent each year of Easter Eggs and most of them will have vanished by Easter Monday. This year Easter is at the end of March so now is the time to consider what to buy.

Whether indoors or outdoors, Pure feels you should have music where ever you are located.

This is a ground coffee machine that has the huge advantage of a built in timer so that your first cup of coffee can be ready to drink either when you wake up or arrive at your work first thing in the morning all you need to do is prime the machine with water and your favourite ground coffee before you leave the night before or before you go to bed. Even if you forget I found around six minutes was enough to be getting that high from the coffee sm

This latest Sound Bar from Sound Blaster is a 2.1 system meaning not only do you get the main bar but also another box that contains the bass speaker. This gives not only normal sounds such as speech and music from the speakers in the sound bar but also the low notes such as bass action from the other box and in action movies this really give the cinema effects.

The words ‘All In One’ normally relate to a printer that also copies and scan. Here it is an audio device that has everything in a single unit that measures 38x18x11cm. So you have DAB+, FM, Internet Radio, CD, Spotify, Podcasts, Bluetooth Audio and Auxiliary Input via 3.5mm socket.

This is the smaller of two ‘Cooler Bags’ designed to keep things like beers cool over a long period of time for those into outdoor pastimes when far away from any electrical power. However I can see another use to keep things hot for a long period of time especially in these current times when some may not know when their next hot meal may come.

Here I am looking at two new lights from WIZ. They are both mains powered but the control can be by an App or a remote control. The first a 30cm bar light described as the way to light up small spaces with ease. The second 10.5cm round and 18cm tall with a leather handle, when first powered on both start out and white but by using the App or the optional remote control they can be any colour you like and that is just the start there are more options.

While I am sure we all enjoy good Coffee Shop coffee, sad to say even those with far deeper pockets than mine are starting to see where savings can be made. Sadly one of these is the coffee shop, while some instant offering are tolerable what if you could have coffee grounded and brewed in your home of office, you can with this latest offering from Melitta the Purista Series 300 Jubilee Edition.

Most people will have heard of Ring for their video doorbells. However they also do other products and here is a Security System with an associated item a Glass Break Sensor. In my area there are dozens of homes that have Ring door bells and these do have a small security aspect in that every time movement is detected even if the bell is not pushed you get an alert to your phone.

Over the years I have had the chance to try several vacuum cleaners and carpet washers both big and small from VAX. The more recent carpet washers are great in that they make the decisions, move forward and wash and move backwards to dry. These however have one drawback space, by that I mean you need to empty the room and in today’s cluttered world that is not easy and that is where the Spot Washer comes in.

Having recently told you about a large outdoor camera that can be Wi-Fi or Ethernet here one that is a lot smaller but it still offers the choice of Wi-Fi or Ethernet but of course it weighs a lot less and has another very useful feature it’s a lot cheaper but still offers the same resolution of 2K.

This portable projector has an internal battery big enough to show two full length movies. Connection types are Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, direct cable and more. Best of all it costs less than £400 and it has an Auto Portrait mode when needed. The base allows you to connect a tripod, even without one you can choose its position as it is twelve sided.

This is an outdoor camera, it is designed to be mounted on a ceiling or wall and hang downwards. Unlike a lot of small indoor cameras this is designed to be seen and therefore this can have the effect of deterring before intrusion happens.

The problem with most upright cleaners is when you need to move them over obstructions or upstairs they are quite heavy. Now Hoover has produced an upright cleaner that is 30% lighter than previous models but still just as powerful.

This is a battery controlled external camera with Siren and Floodlight and you have the choice of what it can detect, as an example ‘human only’ would be great in my area with the number of cats and foxes that roam around, if can save lots of false alarms that both you and your neighbour's will appreciate.

I was sent an email offering samples to review from a company called If You Care, I asked for household gloves and cleaning cloths, what I received was far more so I will tell you about what was delivered from ‘If You Care’. Before the pandemic of close to 18 months ago I am sure we all washed everything and wiped surfaces regularly, now I am certain we do all that and more and probably most people’s hands suffer from all the extra twenty second washes that take place numerous times a day.

As far as I know this is the first Wash and Dry unit, earlier units shampooed and then washed drying often meant that that room was out of bounds for a good length of time. Here this unit automatically washes on the forward stroke and dry’s on the back stroke, for even quicker results there is a dry only mode.

This is the latest offering from Ring, the Ring Video Doorbell 4. As far as I remember this is the smallest ever box yet it still has everything required in it. Dependent on where you live a problem could well be false positives which may be generated by field of view, it is possible to limit certain factors in what the camera sees however bushes and trees may still be a problem, but there is a solution with ‘People only Mode’.

This is filter coffee machine, simple in design but works well with easy to use controls. Perhaps best of all very it is easy to clean so if your tipple is filter coffee then this offering from Melitta should certainly be on your short list.

Most recent ‘outdoor’ cameras that have crossed my desk have been battery offerings that would require you to climb up to change the battery or recharge it. They of course require only fitting, this offering from D-Link is wired so it needs to go through either a wall window or door frame to get power and to deliver its signal to you.

Normally I get a lot of ideas from ‘Christmas In July’ events, of course with the Pandemic there were none but one clever PR company sent links in a very large PDF file with some of the items available to review during what is normally a quiet month August and here is the first of those offerings a pair of pocket pruners that are also a multi-tool.

The Neos Indoor Camera was developed in association with an insurance company and their clients were the first to benefit from it. Here are two more items that can save the householders money by avoiding water damage problems and the second a sensor kit so you can know when a door or window is opened or movement is detected.

This looks outwardly rather similar to the Krups Piccolo XS machine published in December 2019 but that was a manual machine and this one is automatic in that all Nescafe Pods now have a number of strokes to represent the amount of water to make the perfect drink. You adjust the dial on the machine and the correct amount of hot or cold water is then dispensed.

This is an outdoor (IP65 waterproofing) camera, it uses custom batteries that form more than half of the units overall size. Fitting can be done by anyone happy to climb a ladder and it should take only a few minutes but do not try to install it before you have linked it to your phone.

Earlier versions had one problem for my door frame they were slightly too wide. This version solves this and indeed another problem that I had never thought of. So the people at Ring have listened to my moans and probably that of others and now both are solved.

This is an indoor security camera, the colour option works in lower light than a lot of others and while easy to setup once you have decided what ‘password’ it wants you to enter to link, then it offers a great deal more options in the settings than almost any other such camera and for those who want them it can provide so many choices over the basics.

Web Cams until the recent CoronaVirus were something that sat in the top surround of a panel of your Notebook/Tablet, often people worried about being spied upon, recent panels I have seen now have no Web Cam. So hence the need for decent offerings like this one from Logitechh that can keep friends and family in touch.