Gahahahahahajaj by El loco1919

ELECTRIFYING MUSIC TECH GADGETS / GAMES / GEAR

Light up with Siri

MARTY McFLYKNIT

Nike’s connected, motorised, selflacing kicks rule

Fit a 4K security cam

Has a nice Ring to it

R E T R A S M I V IN G L E M O H

Wash up with Google

O T S T E G D E A F I G L T GREA MATE YOUR AU TO

PLUS! Ruark R5 speaker Best juicers Honor vs Honor Wireless in-ears

Secure your front door

Turn up the heat £4.99 Mar 2019 www.stuﬀ.tv

Wake up with Alexa

CON S ON THE COVER

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P16 p38 Smart security

HOT STUFF 8

16 18 20 22 24 26 28 29 30

The Hot Five O Honor View 20 O Asus ROG Mothership GZ700 O DJI Smart Controller O Philips 7304 Series O Honor Watch Magic Vital stats Nike Adapt BB Ooh, you lacy bugger Icon Ruark Audio R5 Speaker, or legless ’70s coffee table? Apps Including three different ways to be bald Best of NAMM 2019 Instruments of note at the LA expo Games Suit up to battle Anthem’s monsters Stream Curfew: dystopian post-Brexit carmageddon Start menu Fancy a germ-blasting robot space-puck? Wheels The new Supra: a Toyota/BMW mash-up Your month Fill those awkward moments when you don’t want to eat, sleep or have a wee

TESTS p40 Smart lights

p42 Smart heating

p36 Smart displays

53 First test Devialet Phantom Reactor 900 We hope this sounds as good as it looks… 60 Versus Honor View 20 vs Honor Magic2 Banishing the notch with two novel ideas 62 Tested Mobvoi Ticwatch S2 Is this smartwatch as clever as it thinks it is? 64 Tested Acer Nitro 5 A gaming laptop for less than a grand! 65 Tested Volvo XC60 This Swede’s cooler than Zlatan’s fridge 69 3 of the best Fully wireless earbuds Sony, Jabra and B&O: ear we go… 70 Tested Kindle Paperwhite (4th gen) Bath times have never been less fraught 82 Tested Huawei Mate 20 X Bigger than the Mate 20 Pro… but better? 86 Tested Withings Pulse HR Activity tracker that moves to the beat 87 Tested Insta360 One X This action cam’s quite literally an all-rounder 88 Long-term test Palm Phone Mini marvel or tiny terror? 90 Tested Games Resident Evil 2, Kingdom Hearts 3, Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown

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WIN! p33

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FEATURES 34 Cover feature Smart home 2.0 Congratulations, you’ve taught Alexa how to turn the lights on… but there’s much more to the automated home in 2019 50 Mini meme One-thumb games Because all your other digits are frozen stiff 58 Upvoted Juicers All the pulp friction you can handle 66 Instant upgrades DJI Mavic 2 Pro Take your drone footage to a higher level 72 Music-making tech Top kit for synth-squelchers, axe-attackers, beat-bashers and piano-plinkers 84 Beta yourself Feedly Let the wonders of the web come to you 114 Next big thing? Cars with legs For those hard-to-reach places, like Norfolk

TOP TENS 96 Smartphones, tablets, mobile games What’s the handiest, handsomest handset? 98 Headphones, wearables In-ears, on-ears, smartwatches, trackers 100 Laptops, hi-fi Porta-powerhouses and super speakers 102 TVs, soundbars, smart speakers All you need for a lazy night/day/year in 104 Home cinema, consoles, games Streaming gadgets and gaming goodies 106 Tech toys, electric cars, VR Playing, driving, escaping from reality 108 Smart home, drones, compact cameras Comfort when you’re in, fun when you’re out 110 System cameras, budget buys ‘Proper’ cameras and the best tech bargains 112 How to buy… an instant camera

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p48

Welcome My name is Guy and I'm a smart home addict. If there’s an upgrade that will make my home cleaner, safer, more efficient or more fun, I want it. When I recently moved home, I had an electrician installing a Netatmo Thermostat and a Nest Hello doorbell before I even had a bed. And the cups of tea were obviously provided via a Xiaomi smart kettle that I controlled from my phone. The reason I can’t stop buying this stuff is that, after years of competing standards, hubs and apps, it’s finally starting to all play nice together. Whether you’ve tied yourself to Amazon, Google or even Apple’s smart assistants, most smart home kit now works with them. The most complicated part has become remembering the right wake word for each device. This month’s big feature is all about the best smart home tech in 2019 – so whether you’re a novice or a pro, there’s going to be a gadget in here for you. We’ve also been making a racket with our music-making special, featuring all the latest tech-enabled ways to create killer songs. And then there’s the first test of Devialet’s latest gorgeous wireless speaker, plus our pick of the best upgrades for our favourite drone, the DJI Mavic 2 Pro. It’s an embarrassment of hi-tech riches! Enjoy the issue! Guy Cocker, Global Brand Director / @guycocker

Advertising 020 8267 5493 Account Manager Michelle Flowers Business Development Director Richard Rowe Ad Operations Manager Martin Williams Production: AT Graphics Team Leader Melanie Cooper Management Managing Director Phil Weeden Chief Executive Steve Wright Chairman Steve Annetts Finance Director Joyce Parker-Sarioglu Publishing Director Kevin McCormick Publishing Operations Manager Charlotte Whittaker Retail Distribution Managers Eleanor Brown, Steve Brown Audience Development Manager Andy Cotton Head of Events Kat Chappell Senior Print Production Manager Nicola Pollard Print Production Manager Georgina Harris Print Production Controller Alicia Stewart Subscription Marketing Manager Nick McIntosh • Volume 23 issue 3 • ISSN: 1364-963 • On sale 21 Feb 2019 • Audit Bureau of Circulations: 54,492 (Jan-Dec 2017) DISTRIBUTION Seymour Distribution Ltd, 2 East Poultry Avenue, London, EC1A 9PT www.seymour.co.uk Tel: 020 7429 4000 PRINTING William Gibbons & Sons Ltd

GET THIS MONTH’S DIGITAL EDITION Stuff is also available in digital form – download it from the App Store or Google Play, or turn to p48 for this month’s subscription offer. You can also get Stuff from Pocketmags for reading on PC, on Kindle Fire or online.

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Kelsey Media 2019 © All rights reserved. Kelsey Media is a trading name of Kelsey Publishing Ltd. Reproduction in whole or in part is forbidden except with permission in writing from the publishers. Note to contributors: articles submitted for consideration by the editor must be the original work of the author and not previously published. Where photographs are included, which are not the property of the contributor, permission to reproduce them must have been obtained from the owner of the copyright. The Editor cannot guarantee a personal response to all letters and emails received. The views expressed in the magazine are not necessarily those of the Editor or the Publisher. Kelsey Publishing Ltd accepts no liability for products and services offered by third parties. Kelsey Media takes your personal data very seriously. For more information on our privacy policy, please visit www.kelsey.co.uk/privacy-policy/ If at any point you have any queries regarding Kelsey’s data policy you can email our Data Protection Officer at dpo@kelsey.co.uk

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Making Stuff up Managing Editor Richard Purvis Contributing Editor James Day Hot Stuff Editor Matt Tate Online Editor Natalya Paul Content Editor Heather Wald Global Brand Director Guy Cocker Contributors Andrew Williams, Craig Grannell, Andrew Hayward, Sam Kieldsen, Tom Wiggins, Tom Morgan, Simon Lucas, Adam Cook, Leon Poultney, Mike Jennings, Matt Cabral, Brittany Vincent, Rob Keenan, Ross Presly

I CLEANED UP WITH A TINY TOY DYSON It’s kind of funny that lots of toys are just mini home appliances. At the Toy Fair in Kensington Olympia, I somehow ended up playing with Casdon’s Little Helper Dyson cord-free vacuum cleaner. It simulates a cyclone, and little balls whirr around in the cylinder just like dust or dirt. It even has attachments like the grown-up Dyson I have at home. What I can’t get my head around is why it’s way more fun to use than the real thing. Heather Wald, Content Editor

I PLAYED MUSIC USING MY TROUSERS Drumming is great fun; finding space for a drum kit less so. So Sphero’s new Specdrums kit uses a colour-sensing ring to turn practically anything into a percussion instrument. You can use the coloured mat that comes in the box, but we had much more fun turning other stuff in the office into instruments – be it furniture, objects or our own clothing. It might have been cold of late, but Specdrums made me want to bring out my most garish Bermudas. Guy Cocker, Global Brand Director

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OUR MONTH Fluffy fun, funky flares, foldy phones, fuzzy physics I FOLDED THE WORLD’S ONLY FOLDABLE PHONE Like a Spice Girls reunion and the apocalypse, we’ve known foldable phones have been coming for ages, but the Royole FlexPai claims a page in the history books as the first bendy blower to hit the market. It’s essentially a 7.8in tablet with a flexible AMOLED display thinner than a hair. When folded, the FlexPai turns into a double-sided phone with a hinge formed by the excess screen. It’s not a looker, and the software is all over the place… but in 10 years I’ll be able to say I was there at the start. Matt Tate, Hot Stuff Editor

I USED QUANTUM PHYSICS TO ROCK LIKE A MUTHA The Nanotechnology Research Centre in Edmonton, Alberta, is one of Canada’s most distinguished academic institutions… but sometimes even boffins need to tear off those starchy lab coats and have some fun. In the case of the two NRC scientists behind Nanolog Audio, that meant using cutting-edge ‘quantum tunnelling’ tech to create a new kind of guitar distortion pedal. Are the results mind-blowingly cosmic? Nah, just… quite nice. But that’s Canadians for you. Richard Purvis, Managing Editor

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Plenty of pix up its sleeve The View 20’s camera skills are not all down to that high megapixel count. Its 48MP sensor is aided by artificial image stabilisation and 4-in-1 ‘superpixels’ for night shots.

HOT FIVE #1 HOLE LOTTA LOVE Honor View 20

In a world where almost every smartphone is an expensive, superpowered rectangle, it’s becoming ever harder for the handsets that don’t unexpectedly explode in your hand (you know who you are) to make an impression. That’s not the case with Honor’s hole-ier-than-thou View 20. Half the price of an iPhone XS, this is the first blower to sport a punch-hole on the front. After it became clear there are more people who think pineapple belongs on pizza than there are people 8

who like notches, Honor came up with an alternative: a small cutout that houses the 25MP selfie camera, leaving you more of that 6.4in LCD to look at. There’s also the 48MP main camera sensor borrowed from Sony, an AI Ultra Clarity mode that puts to work every one of those pixels, and a stonking 4000mAh battery. Oh, and there’s a headphone port. Find us a better-equipped £500 Android phone and we’ll hand over the keys to Stuff Towers. As hot as… a Hawaiian thin crust from £500 / hihonor.com

Kirin me softly The View has more in common with our current champ, the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, than you might think. Most importantly, it has the same super-quick Kirin 980 CPU.

22 PAGES OF THE BIGGEST STORIES FROM PLANET TECH

Back to the future Flip this phone over and you’ll see its back is covered in arrow-like highlights and edges that fade to near-black – it’s a bold look in a sea of me-too rivals.

FULL REVIEW p60

With ports and all Such a beefy rig should have plenty of connectivity optionsâ&#x20AC;Ś and it does. You get two USB-C ports plus four USB-A, HDMI, an SD card slot and Ethernet.

(Key)board game With the keyboard attached, the Mothership looks like a traditional gaming laptop. Pull the board away from its magnetic anchors, though, and it goes wireless.

HOT FIVE #2 PLAY IT COOL Asus ROG Mothership GZ700 What would happen if you dressed Microsoft’s Surface Pro in a suit of glowing armour and made it really good at Overwatch? Well, it’d probably look a lot like Asus’s brilliantly bonkers ROG Mothership, a 17.3in gaming ‘laptop’ with a kickstand and foldable, detachable keyboard. This all-in-one beast is armed with an overclocked eighth-gen Intel Core i9 CPU and GeForce RTX 2080 GPU, with AI-boosted graphics and support for ray tracing, the next-gen rendering technique that’s all the rage in PC gaming right now. The Full HD IPS display has a 144Hz refresh rate, 3ms response time and Nvidia’s G-Sync, helping it keep the fastest games buttery-smooth. With so much grunt under the hood, you’re probably fearing that the Mothership’s base will do a pretty good impression of a frying pan – but all the important components are stored behind the upright monitor, as opposed to sitting flat on a desk. This makes it much easier to get cool air into the thing when you really start to give it a workout. At 4.7kg you can’t call it lightweight, but we’re willing to sacrifice a few backpacks for the height of portable PC gaming decadence. As hot as… a bonfire of all those antiquated horizontal gaming laptops £tba / asus.com 11

You know what’s Watt You’re not going to get a premium audio experience here, but the 20W sound system in The One is apparently beefier than the one in the outgoing 7303.

HOT FIVE #3 WATCH GAME OF DRONES ON THE BIG SCREEN DJI Smart Controller

It’s pretty great that your already extraordinarily talented smartphone also turns into a live-feed screen and control centre for your drone when plugged into a pad. But unless you like deliberately crashing expensive quadcopters as if you’re trying to resurrect Jackass, this means decommissioning said phone from any WhatsApping and BBC Sport checking duties while you’re playing pilot. Drone flying can be tricky on sunny days too, because many smartphone screens just aren’t bright enough. The solution to both of these very first-world problems is DJI’s new Smart Controller, a remote controller with its own 5.5in 1080p touch display. Designed to work with any DJI drone using OcuSync 2.0 technology (which includes the new Mavic 2 range), it’s able to function in temperatures as low as -20ºC and its screen is about twice the brightness of a standard phone’s, so it’ll remain visible even in direct sunlight. It runs on Android, so you’ll be able to install third-party apps, and features an HDMI output able to play 4K videos at up to 60fps on your TV. As hot as… the wax of Icarus’s wings £579 / dji.com 12

OR TRY THIS… PHILIPS 8804 When Philips created the stunning OLED+903 with Bowers & Wilkins-specified audio performance, we should have seen the 8804 coming: the first Philips LCD to feature sound provided by B&W. It’s a telly for people who don’t want to stump up for OLED, but care about the crackle of John Wick’s gun sounding just so.

HOT FIVE #4 THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE(S) Philips 7304 Series

TV makers seem hell-bent on making their product names as overly long and confusing as possible. Just try enthusing to your parents about the OLEDHZ5000ABCDEF(4X). Props to Philips, then, for trying to keep things simple with its new mid-range 4K LCD set, nicknamed ‘The One’. Of course, it isn’t quite that simple: the telly’s official name is 7304, and it comes in a wide range of screen sizes, some with different stands. So yeah, there is more than one The One. Still, Philips is ticking some nice

big boxes here: the pale silver bezel is paired with three-sided Ambilight to give your wall the rainbow treatment, while the P5 engine should do a fine job with picture processing. It supports HDR 10+ and HLG, as well as Dolby Atmos and Dolby Vision, and the onboard Android TV OS allows you to yap orders at both Google Assistant and Alexa. The one thing it’s missing is a price. Get that right and it could be… well, The One. As hot as… the Special One (in about 2005) £tba / philips.co.uk

Stands to attention Opt for the 43, 50, 55 or 58in model and you get a T-bar stand that swivels. The 65 and 70in models have stick feet, losing the swivel. But you do get, y’know, a bigger telly.

Gonna have to press you Like the Huawei Watch GT, the Watch Magic has two side-mounted buttons for navigating around the interface when you’re not tapping away at the screen.

Smart lighting Fitness tracking and notifications are all well and good, but we can all agree that a torch mode for finding your way to the front door at 3am is any wearable’s key feature.

HOT FIVE #5 AND FOR MY NEXT TICK… Honor Watch Magic

Calling a watch ‘magic’ when we’ve all seen what Bernard’s could do is a brave piece of marketing from Honor; but what the brand’s first wearable lacks in time-rewinding abilities, it makes up for in value. This €179 smartwatch looks a lot like parent firm Huawei’s Watch GT, and runs the same Light OS. This gives you a host of pre-loaded apps and tracking for most activities – which is just as well, because you can’t add any third-party software. There’s no music player either, so if you’re thinking of going 14

phone-less on a run, you’re going to need to get used to humming those motivational dance tracks. Its 390x390 1.2in AMOLED display is smaller than the Watch GT’s 1.39in screen, and a bit lower-res, but don’t be dissuaded: you get built-in GPS, NFC, waterproofing up to 50m, a heart-rate monitor and a promised seven days of battery life. And to Apple Watch owners, that last bit will definitely sound like a kind of magic. As hot as… magic (baked) beans €179 / hihonor.com

HANDS-ON WATCH MAGIC NATALYA PAUL ONLINE EDITOR What do you want from a smartwatch? Navigation, a lovely touchscreen, dive-worthy waterproofing, 24hr heart monitoring, sleep tracking and something that doesn’t look like you’ve Sellotaped a walkie-talkie to your wrist? The Honor Watch Magic has the whole set; and while it lacks the ability to add new apps, this is still a fine and impressively feature-packed ticker for the price.

V I

T A L S T A T S

BOY LACER Marty McFly’s never had it so good £270 / nike.com

Meet the Adapt BB: Nike’s first mass-market basketball self-lacer O Back to Back to the Future 2 Yes. About that. The film’s tech predictions haven’t really worked out, have they? Hungry couch potatoes can’t instantly magic up a 20-inch deep pan by sliding a tiny dried-out pizza into a hydrator, hoverboards don’t actually hover, and self-lacing Nikes – well, they exist, but they’re 10 times the price of regular Nikes. Not any more, chum: the Adapt BBs are the company’s first semi-affordable, surprisingly practical self-lacers. 16

O Put your best foot forward Refining the formula of Nike’s first self-lacing trainer, the insanely pricey HyperAdapt 1.0 (launched in 2016), the Adapt BB reduces the size of the motor and gears that automatically pull the laces taut when you slip your foot inside and apply weight. Changing the fit requires the mere tap of a button on the side of the sole – or on your phone’s screen… O App’s the way to (just) do it In true smart sneaker style, the Adapt BB is compatible with a companion app that lets you not only adjust the tensile strength of the laces remotely, but also

switch between a series of presets for both the left and right shoes, and even customise the colour of the lighting. And Nike says the FitAdapt system will evolve even more functionality over time. O Sole power The Adapt BB also has something you won’t even find in every flagship smartphone: wireless charging. Set a pair down on the supplied charging mat and the lights will give a quick indication of the battery level. But don’t sweat if they run dry during a game: you’ll always be able to loosen the laces manually to take them off.

Find the light-up buttons a bit too blingy? They’re only on while you adjust the fit.

THESE SHOES EVEN HAVE WIRELESS CHARGING: JUST SET THEM DOWN ON THE SUPPLIED MAT

TECHIE TRAINERS O Puma RS-Computer Originally launched in 1986 but recently released in a strictly limited run, this trailblazer has a sensor bolted onto the heel to track calories, distance and time.

O Under Armour HOVR Phantom Connected

Hole new ball game

GARMIN APPROACH G80 Playing golf can be a lonely pastime. When you’re hacking your way out of the rough for the eighth time in the space of one hole, it’s easy to feel like the whole world is against you. But with Garmin’s Approach G80, you won’t even need a real course: while its GPS and 3.5in colour touchscreen can be used to work out the distance to the pin, its radar capabilities mean you can also use it to play virtual courses on the driving range. Place it next to your ball and it’ll calculate estimated distance, club head speed, ball speed and ‘smash factor’; all this can then be used to play virtual rounds on over 41,000 pre-loaded courses, allowing you to compete against other G80 owners. Who’s lonely now? $500 / garmin.com

The tracker discreetly embedded within these runners snaffles up all the relevant data from your morning jog, siphoning it off to the MapMyRun app.

O Nike Epic React Flyknit 2 While you won’t find electronics within these gaudy sneaks, there’s cutting-edge tech in the form of the foam soles, which are reactive to conserve energy and cushion your feet.

Compact discs

McINTOSH MTI100 It’s a fact of audiophile life that listening to vinyl takes up a lot of space. If it’s not the records themselves, there’s all the kit you need to play the damned things. McIntosh’s latest turntable, however, cuts things down to the bare minimum without sacrificing on the sonics. Built into the MTI100 are a valve preamp, a shielded phono preamp and a Class D power amp that’s rated at 80 Watts per channel, so all you need to do is plug in a pair of speakers. If you really miss the old days there’s also a subwoofer output, and analogue and digital inputs mean you can even use it as a sound system for your TV. Throw in a Bluetooth receiver and it does pretty much everything your high-class ears could ever need. £7945 / mcintoshlabs.com

NEWS FEED NINTENDO FIRES A SHOT TO THE KART Despite knowing next to nothing about the upcoming smartphone version of Mario Kart, we still comfortably count it as our most anticipated mobile game. Because, you know… Mario Kart. In your pocket. At all times. Sadly, though, the game’s launch has been pushed back to the summer.

Red dead-cool redemption

NUU MOBILE G3 RED When news reached Stuff that Jester Red was being tipped by Pantone and Vogue as a hot trend for SS19, we chose to ignore them. We tend to deal in just ‘red’ and ‘not red’ in these parts. However, when it became apparent that a similar shade of scarlet was to be used on an affordable feature-packed smartphone, the opportunity to beat the fashion curve for the first time in our godforsaken miserable lives was too good to pass up. The Nuu Mobile G3 has also been furnished with Android 8.0 (Oreo), an octa-core processor, 4K video support, NFC for Google Pay, facial ID and 3D fingerprint security, plus 13MP + 5MP rear cameras and 64GB of memory. Grab one whenever you’re reddy. £200 / uk.nuumobile.com

YOUTUBE MUSIC JOINS SONOS’S BAND You know that obscure cover of Toto’s Africa that you think is superior to the original? Well, you’re wrong; but YouTube Music is now available in the Sonos app, so if you have a Premium subscription you can fire content from YouTube’s huge library of remixes and covers to your Sonos speakers.

BT SPORT’S NEW APP GRABS A HAT-TRICK Regardless of your views on Robbie Savage, it’s hard to argue with BT Sport’s output. And you can now watch Tottenham’s charge to the Champions League final (you heard) on even more devices: available on Xbox One, Apple TV and Samsung TV, the new BT Sport app features 4K support.

COACHING WIRELESS BUDS ARE EAR TO HELP Launching on Indiegogo, the Soul Blade is the first true wireless earbud to offer AI voice coaching. It monitors a variety of parameters and offers you feedback on how to correct your technique. Presumably your Blades will also tell you off when you stop after half a mile to eat a Twix.

Extra Alexa

LENOVO SMART TAB M10/P10 Do you ever feel like your gadgets could work a bit harder when you’re not using them? Lenovo does. That’s why its new Android-powered Smart Tab has a second job. When you’re not jabbing away at its 10.1in Full HD display, it has a speaker-packing Smart Dock with three far-field microphones so you can summon Alexa and use it as a smart display. The Smart Tab comes in two versions. Both have Snapdragon 450 processors, but the slightly chunkier M10 has up to 16GB of storage, 2GB of RAM, a pair of speakers and a 2MP camera on the front plus a 5MP one on the rear, while the P10 (pictured) has up to 32GB and 3GB of RAM, better cameras and two extra speakers. from £180 / lenovo.com

I C O N

THE POSH EXTERIOR HIDES A 90W STEREO AMP WITH TWO NEODYMIUM DRIVERS PLUS A SUBWOOFER

RUARK R5 £999 / ruarkaudio.com Who knocked the legs off the pretty coffee table? Ruark did… except it didn’t have any legs to begin with, and it’s not a coffee table. The Ruark R5 is essentially a cheaper, shrunken-down version of the veteran British audio brand’s R7 Radiogram (which does have legs) – but that’s not to say it isn’t a comparably high-end piece of hi-fi kit, or absolutely rammed with features.

Sorry, I stopped listening when I spotted what looks a lot like a CD drive…? Yup. Rightfully earning its billing as a truly all-in-one music system, the R5 is packing a CD player, a DAB radio, aptX HD Bluetooth and Wi-Fi, plus analogue, digital and optical inputs. Realising that not everyone will want to dust off their physical Bee Gees collection, Ruark has also included streaming support for Spotify, Deezer, Tidal

and Amazon Music via its own app. You won’t find any voice assistants hiding inside; but let’s face it, most people picking one of these up probably don’t trust Alexa yet. Am I right to presume it sounds pretty good too? That’s a safe bet. The R5’s posh exterior hides a newly developed Class A/B 90W stereo amp. The 75mm drivers use neodymium magnets, while a long-throw

subwoofer handles bass. All of this is reinforced by Ruark’s latest sound-processing tech, which it says creates a soundstage comparable to what you’d expect from separate speakers. Very handsome, isn’t it? Not half. Like Wensleydale cheese and Sean Bean, the acoustic fabric comes from that there Yorkshire, and you get a choice of ‘rich walnut’ or ‘soft grey’ lacquer finishes.

A P P S This month’s mobile must-downloads 1

3 OF THE BEST BRIAN ENO APPS BLOOM: 10 WORLDS

£7.99 / Android, iOS Finally on Android, this ‘remastered’ interactive instrument/ artwork/album includes 10 takes on its tappy goodness.

SCAPE

£11.99 / iPad Each track on this Eno/ Chilvers collab resembles a minimalist landscape. Want to delve in yourself? Create your own ‘scapes’ to share by email.

REFLECTION

1 Visionist

2 NanoStudio 2

3 Overdrop Weather

£free / Android O £1.99 / iOS Prisma kickstarted the idea of apps that Munch your lunch or Picasso your face. But Visionist isn’t about one-tap filters – you refine the art with options for ‘abstractness’ and how the layer interacts with a snap.

£28.99 / iPad Before GarageBand, there was NanoStudio. No longer so ‘nano’ (it’s iPad-only for now), this great follow-up offers an end-to-end music production suite… or just a means of making a triumphant din.

£free / Android Yes, another weather app – but this one’s interesting. Beyond minimalist icons and animated illustrations are a slew of widgets that provide forecasts, but also battery info and search fields.

4 HomeRun

5 Bendy and the Ink Machine

6 Don’t Trip

£2.99 / watchOS If you’ve wired up your entire house to obey your whims, you probably think you’re living in the future. You’ll feel even more like Captain Kirk by triggering HomeKit scene control right from your wrist.

£6.99 / Android, iOS Old-school cartoons often look a tad freaky. But here they’re also a bit murdery, as you delve into the mystery at the heart of an animation studio.

£free / Android, iOS Use two thumbs and twist your phone about to perform a very silly walk. Your aim: have your stompy feet avoid treading on plastic bricks, roaming Roombas and, um, lava. Sheesh, someone needs a tidy-up!

7 Hyper Sentinel

8 See/saw

9 Chuchel

£1.99 / Android, iOS If you’re old, you may recall Uridium (and will now be making happy mewing noises). This game offers similar fast-paced horizontal-scrolling shooty thrills, but also massive bosses.

£2.59 / Android O £2.99 / iOS Oh, the poor protagonist of this bouncy platformer. As if it weren’t enough to task him with collecting coins in hazard-strewn rooms, he mostly has to die to succeed. This wasn’t in the job description.

£4.49 / Android O £4.99 / iOS Previous adventures from Amanita Design punched your brain in the face, but this is a milder affair. You guide a fuzzball through assorted oddball scenes towards his life’s goal: a juicy red cherry.

£29.99 / iOS, tvOS No interaction here. Instead, it’s distilled Eno: a combined album/painting that constantly remixes itself, changing with the hours and seasons.

FUTURE STUFF FEATURELESS PHONES Ear matcher

If you think smartphones all look the same now, Craig Grannell’s got some news for the blank generation

NURALOOP The music-loving scientists at Nura like to push things to silly levels of nerdery; but if the NuraLoop in-ears sound as good as the Nuraphone headphones before them, we’re happy to leave them to it. These buds house Nura’s clever self-learning tech that measures how you respond to different frequencies and adapts sound accordingly, so all your music is personalised. You can choose from wireless or wired options (the latter with magnetic cable attachment), and Nura promises a full day of battery life. Active noise-cancelling allows you to enjoy uninterrupted head-nodding sessions, but there’s also a social mode that lets external sound pass through when you’re forced to interact with humans. £tba / nuraphone.com

We’re only a few weeks into 2019, and already phone companies are hurling concept art and press releases about with merry abandon. Their current infatuation: making tech vanish. And it seems they’re going to take this a bit too literally, making your phone almost disappear in two distinct stages. This goes way beyond dumping the headphone jack or shrinking the notch: the idea is to eradicate all buttons and holes. So you’ll no longer have speaker grilles, you’ll only be able to charge wirelessly, eSIMs will be enforced, and you’ll get no physical buttons for on/off or changing the volume. Not excited by this prospect? Neither are we, to be honest. But the second part could be even trickier. Stage two is to make devices truly wafer-thin, so you’ll be able to shove even a giant clown-shoes phone into a wallet; for full-on tablet-style use, you’ll

THERE’LL BE NO SPEAKER GRILLES AND NO PHYSICAL BUTTONS FOR ON/OFF OR VOLUME

Fox catcher

NIKON COOLPIX A1000 Whether you’re a keen holidaymaker, an enthusiastic wildlife geek or an obsessive football manager with an interest in your opponents’ training sessions, having a camera with a decent zoom on it always comes in handy. Nikon’s new Coolpix A1000 allows you to get up close and personal with its 35x optical zoom lens, with a choice between a large electronic viewfinder and a 3in tilting LCD touchscreen to frame your shots. Inside is a 16MP CMOS sensor that can shoot RAW snaps and 4K video at 30 frames per second. And if that garden-hopping urban fox happens to wander out of shot, there’s a snap-back zoom button that smoothly retracts the lens to a wider angle. £409 / nikon.com

simply unfold it. If you get a call on the Tube (or, as this is the future, the Magical London Hoverrail™), you’ll fold the thing in half to make it more manageable. And when you’re done, you’ll just cram it into a pocket. This is, of course, far from being mature tech. Early examples are, um, sub-optimal, with a big ol’ hinge and an unnerving bump when you try to lay them flat. People don’t like notches much, but we suspect ridges in the middle of a screen might be a step too far. Still, that’s your future: yelling at featureless black rectangles with less personality than a lump of tofu.

B E S T O F

WINTER NAMM 2019 On with the ear-defenders and out with the wallets for the most saliva-triggering new products of the big LA music expo MORE NEW MUSIC TECH P72

SHRUNK ROCK

KEY CHANGE

SQUELCH ASSEMBLY

Marshall Studio Series

Arturia MicroFreak

EHX Bass Mono Synth

There are two features shared by most of the classic guitar amps that Marshall has produced over the past half-century or so: extreme bigness and even more extreme loudness. This is fine if it’s 1969 and you’re playing Fillmore East; not so much if it’s 2019 and you’re at home in Penge West. So here comes the Studio Series: compact, 20-Watt versions of the British maker’s greatest hits. from £849 / marshall.com

You might be wondering why Arturia has made the keyboard of its latest zany synth look like a decorative screen in a Moroccan brothel. Well, it isn’t really a keyboard at all, but a pressure-sensitive circuit board with ‘poly-aftertouch’ for added expressive interactivity. The MicroFreak blends analogue filters with digital oscillators, and offers sequencing with ‘controlled randomness’. £265 / arturia.com

Normally when a bass player makes a big splatty noise, the rest of the band go “Eeurgh!” and tell the filthy oaf to leave the room. But if your bassist is in possession of Electro-Harmonix’s Bass Mono Synth, that sound might not be trouser-related at all. This pedal allows thudstaff-thwackers to emulate the tones of 11 different synths, from deep electro boops to phat, phunky pharts. £115 / ehx.com

Dunk rock

JAYBIRD RUN XT The human body is a remarkable thing. It’s waterproof (except for a couple of holes in and around the face), it can withstand all kinds of bumps and scrapes and it recharges totally wirelessly. So shouldn’t the earphones you use when you’re exercising be similarly equipped? Not only do Jaybird’s Run XT buds fill up two of the holes that might let in water, but they’ve had their own waterproofing boosted to IPX7 – plus there’s a new double hydrophobic nano coating that makes them completely sweatproof. We could all do with a coating like that. You’ll get four hours out of them, with the wireless charging case offering eight more, and a five-minute blast will give you 60 minutes. £159 / jaybirdsport.com

DROP EVERYTHING & DOWNLOAD Uno! £free / iOS, Android There are two types of people in this world: those who think Uno is the pinnacle of human achievement, and those who don’t know what they’re talking about. This mobile version of the colourful card-matching game allows you to set up games against friends, or it’ll match you with random opponents around the world if all your friends stopped talking to you because of how competitive you get when you play Uno. Games are limited to three minutes, which rules out any possibility of the epic ebbs and flows you sometimes get in the analogue version, and there’s a bit of badgering to get you to buy stuff, but its various modes mean proper addicts can now get their hit even when they’re on the bus or the lav.

Tempest in a teacup

REPLICADE Tempest is a gaming classic, a little ship zipping around vector webs while you blast evil aliens into space dust. But if you want an original Tempest arcade cabinet, you’ll need a massive pile of cash and a ton of space… or will you? RepliCade cunningly transforms the arcade original cabinet into a handheld. Sort of. What you get is a fully playable, officially licensed, limited-edition Tempest at 1/6 scale. The tiny cabinet has a backlit marquee, side panel art and overlay graphics. The original controls have been resized to fit the dinky machine and cater for your giant-sized (relatively speaking) mitts, and those vectors all get to glow on a vivid 3.5in display. Robotron: 2084 next, please! $120 / newwavetoys.com

G A M E S

OUT 22 FEB

FIRST PLAY ANTHEM PS4, Xbox One, PC

[ Words Matt Tate ]

On paper, Anthem is incredible. Take the endlessly moreish shoot-and-loot loop of a game like Destiny, put said formula in the hands of a developer with the narrative chops of RPG specialist BioWare, throw in some mates and you’re surely onto a winner. Anthem’s gods, known as The Shapers, thoughtlessly abandoned the world they created before it was finished, resulting in more than occasional monster invasions and other cataclysms. In the game you play as a Freelancer, a protector 24

of humankind who essentially turns into Iron Man when inside an exosuit. Perhaps it’s a bit reductive to call this game ‘Destiny with flying mechs’, but the tech’d-out Javelin suits are undoubtedly its true USP. Soaring above the jungle ruins, muddy swamps and rocky canyons that make up the world is as great as it looked in those initial trailers. Giving the player full 3D movement can be a nightmare if the controls aren’t up to scratch, but BioWare has done an excellent job; and the

souped-up super-suits also add an entirely different dimension to combat. Play as the Storm (essentially a helmeted wizard), for example, and you can hover above the battlefield for longer, launching fireballs. Then there’s Javelin, a lightning-fast melee specialist who can dart between enemies in unstoppable ninja-like attacks. Providing the missions and story make all the inevitable grinding worthwhile, Anthem is going to give Destiny 2 and every shared-world shooter on the market a bit of a scare.

FIRST LOOK FULL STEAM AHEAD

STEAMWORLD QUEST: HAND OF GILGAMECH Switch

When it comes to indie gaming, few series are as consistent as SteamWorld. The brilliant titles nail that old-fashioned Metroidvania

sense of adventure as well as pretty much anything out there, while SteamWorld Heist makes the often impenetrable turn-based strategy genre more accessible than ever. It’s fair to say, then, that we have high hopes for Image & Form’s latest project. SteamWorld Quest: Hand of

Gilgamech was announced as part of Nintendo’s latest Indie Highlights showcase, where it was also revealed that it would be coming to Switch first. It’s a role-playing game in which you battle enemies for XP using a deck of cards. You’ll be able to craft your own deck from more than 100 punch cards, including

one that lets you bash goblins over the head with a book. This being a fantasy RPG of sorts, the style looks to be more D&D than cartoon steampunk, but you’re still taking a ragtag bunch of steambots into each magical scrap. And, as expected, the hand-drawn visuals look absolutely gorgeous in action.

STILL TO COME MAKE WAR, NOT LOVE

WARGROOVE

INMOST

DOUBLE KICK HEROES

PC, Switch, PS4, Xbox One Out before this fine issue of Stuff hits the shelves, Wargroove looks like the turn-based tactics game Advance Wars fans have been waiting for. With more than 50 hours of story content and a campaign creation mode for when you’re done with that, it’ll keep you going for months.

Switch, PC OK, yes, it’s another probably very difficult pixel art platformer, but Inmost caught our eye with its promise of an interconnecting story. It’s set in an old abandoned castle, which presumably means traps, ghosts and an alarming lack of people to give you a hug when it all gets a bit much.

Switch, PC Like the idea of a zombie-bashing rhythm game that features 30 original metal songs? Double Kick Heroes was a hit on Steam last year, and as a game that involves slaying the undead in a ‘Gundillac’, it only seems right that you’ll be able to take it on the road with the Switch.

INCOMING MARCH O THE DIVISION 2 O SEKIRO: SHADOWS DIE TWICE O DEVIL MAY CRY 5 APRIL O SUPER MEAT BOY FOREVER O DAYS GONE O MORTAL KOMBAT 11 MAY O RAGE 2

Let the icy winter chill drive you into the arms of this selection of newly streamable thrillers, documentaries and comedies

American Gods

Get Out

Triple Frontier

After a lengthy hiatus and an inordinate amount of strife behind the scenes, this mind-expanding modern fantasy series is back for a much anticipated second season. Concerning the war brewing between the deities of the ancient and the modern worlds, American Gods is like a fever dream – it’s even got Lovejoy playing Odin. S2 / Amazon Prime

This Oscar-nommed genre-bending piece functions both as a straight-up horror movie and a wry, insightful treatise on racism. Add in Daniel Kaluuya’s superb lead performance as a black man meeting his white girlfriend’s family for the first time, give it a humorous edge, and you can see why it attracted the Academy’s attention. Film / Netflix

Ben Affleck, Oscar Isaac, Pedro Pascal and Charlie Hunnam play ex-Special Forces troopers robbing a Colombian drug cartel in Netflix’s big original movie for the month… and it has all the makings of a doozy. It’s directed by stylish auteur JC Chandor from a script by the writer of The Hurt Locker – so expect sharp character work. Film / Netflix

Turn Up Charlie

Billions

Fresh from his return to the small screen as maverick London cop (and serial door-smasher and desk-flipper) DCI John Luther, Idris Elba stars in his first comedy series. Here he plays a struggling DJ and unrepentant bachelor whose life is flipped upside-down when he becomes the nanny to his best friend’s rebellious tween daughter. S1 / Netflix

The world’s slickest ginger actor, Damian Lewis, resumes the role of ruthlessly driven Wall Street hedge-fund manager Bobby Axelrod in the fourth season of this beloved drama series, once again pursued by the equally driven New York District Attorney, Chuck Rhoades (played by marvellous uber-schlub Paul Giamatti). S4 / Now TV

Larry Charles’ Dangerous World Of Comedy From his behind-the-camera involvement in the creation of Seinfeld, Curb Your Enthusiasm and Borat, you might assume Larry Charles knows everything about making people laugh. But this documentary series proves otherwise, as he travels the globe to explore what constitutes comedy. S1 / Netflix

DO M N TH ISS ’T IS

Curfew Season 1 / Now TV, Sky

Take a pinch of The Purge, add a tablespoon of The Fast and the Furious, stir in a dash of Mad Max and you might cook up something close to Sky’s latest original series. Set in a dystopian UK where a daily curfew keeps everyone in line and the clearest path to freedom is winning a deadly overnight street race between London and northern Scotland, it looks absolutely bonkers – and doesn’t take itself particularly seriously, which makes a refreshing change from all the other dystopian future-gazing series out there.

S T R E A M

S T A R T M E N U ST KIC AR K TE R

The latest startups, crowdfunded projects and plain crazy ideas

I’ll be bac(terial)

CLEANSEBOT Research suggests hotel light switches are bacteria heaven… and you really don’t want to know what’s in the beds. Fortunately, Cleansebot nukes such nasties. This diminutive 220g wheeled device can sanitise and disinfect any surface, blasting germs with its UV-C lamps. It’ll work for three hours on a single charge, using 18 sensors to intelligently trundle around. There’s a handheld mode as well, and during Cleansebot’s downtime its 3700 mAh battery can even give your phone a juice boost. Mostly, though, this one’s raring for a spot of ‘press and go’, whether used under the covers, in the kitchen or with suspiciously off-white children’s toys. $99 / venturstudio.com BACK IT STACK IT

ST KIC AR K TE R

Craft work

Vinyl decision

Fetch a sketch

Little feat

MODAL CRAFTSYNTH 2.0

LENCO-MD

DRAWMATON

This record player’s striking design, funky tonearm and Audio-Technica AT3600 cartridge are enough to set it apart. But the main hook is that you print and build it yourself, using modules to make the hardware fit that funny little lifestyle of yours. So go wireless with Bluetooth or add solar/speaker modules. €99 / lenco-md.com

Retro-computing nuts with ZX Spectrums are rank amateurs as far as the Drawmaton is concerned. It goes all the way back to the Renaissance, with a design based on drawings found in Leonardo’s Codex Atlanticus. This one-armed master can output mean automated doodles using interchangeable wooden discs. $99 / drawmaton.com

LITTLE BRITISH MONITOR MKII

Modal has form in synths that are small enough to lose down the back of a sofa. But while the original Craftsynth resembled a museum piece, this one’s sleek lines would make any design guru drool. It’s packed with 40 morphable waveforms, 16 oscillator modifiers and a programmable arpeggiator. £99 / modalelectronics.com 28

ST KIC AR K TE R

SACK IT

Despite its dinky 20x12x12cm frame, this hand-crafted active speaker has power to the tune of 4x50W, Bluetooth support and ‘transmission line’ bass porting. And if that doesn’t melt your audiophile heart, the ‘Little Feet’ damping stand that transforms the LBM MkII into a music robot surely will. £299 / audiosmile.com

W H E E L S

Toyota Supra (2019) The swooping rear haunches are part of Toyota’s ‘condensed extreme’ design language – but those air intakes are fake.

SUPRA TROOPER

from £52,695 / toyota.co.uk That’s a Toyota? When did they get so good-looking? Have you been living in the boot of a 1983 Corolla? Toyota has been teasing the fifth-generation Supra for what feels like a decade, with concepts, prototypes, camouflaged test mules and track-only specials doing the rounds in the run-up to launch. But now the real thing is here. What’s under the bonnet? It’s a Supra, so of course there’s an in-line six-cylinder engine running the show, but it’s actually made by BMW. The two companies partnered up on the project, with Toyota getting dibs on the hard-top and BMW bagging the convertible (in the form of the new Z4). Both get a 3.0-litre turbo, which makes 335bhp and 369lb/ft of torque, and propels the Supra to 62mph in 4.3 seconds. All that power goes to the rear wheels, and you can turn off the electronic aids.

Sounds quick, then. But is this a proper sports car? Toyota hasn’t been messing around when it comes to handling, with 50:50 front/rear weight distribution, a compact footprint and a quick-shifting eight-speed automatic gearbox (a manual is also on the way). It’ll eat up a British B-road just as easily as it will a nice clear motorway. Either way, you’ll be happy inside the cabin with its leather sports seats, digital screen and head-up display. So when can I get one? It goes on sale in the summer… but if you haven’t already put a deposit down, you’ll be looking at a long wait. Everyone who lusted after the last-gen car in the ’90s is now rich enough to nab one, so the order books are jam-packed. Best get down to your nearest dealership faster than Dom Toretto at the drag strip.

NEWS DASHBOARD

THE LIGHT IS COMING

ASTON’S BONUS TRACK

HATCH ME IF YOU CAN

Jaguar Land Rover is working on making self-driving cars a little less intimidating for pedestrians with a clever LED light show. Its cars could project the direction they’re travelling in so you aren’t surprised when one turns towards you. All you need to do is lift your eyes from your phone…

A 1130bhp hypercar just not fast enough for you? The Aston Martin Valkyrie can be customised with track-specific bodywork that’ll cut lap times down by as much as 8%, if you can spare the few days it takes for Aston’s engineers to fit it… and if you don’t mind the car no longer being road-legal.

The original hot hatch, the VW Golf GTI, has just got even quicker. A special TCR edition (to celebrate the Golf’s second life as a circuit race car) ups the power to 286bhp for a 162mph top speed. That’s higher than any Golf ever to roll out of VW’s factories. Expect to pay around £34k.

26th THE WALKING DEAD: THE FINAL EPISODE Will the Walking Dead TV show ever actually end? That remains to be seen, but we know for certain that the video game is finally wrapping up, just over seven years since the first episode appeared. With original developers Telltale now all but out of the picture, it falls on Skybound to wrap up Clementine’s tale. No pressure.

O NEXT ISSUE April Next-gen smartphones On sale 21/3/19

YOUR MONTH

MAR

15th US

TWIN FREAKS Peele says Us was inspired by a 1960 episode of The Twilight Zone, Mirror Image, in which a woman is dogged by her own double.

How do you follow Get Out? It’s hard to imagine a more emphatic debut than comedian/director Jordan Peele’s satirical horror masterpiece (now coming to Netflix), and follow-up Us looks likely to leave just as much of an impression. It’s about a family whose beach house is visited by some uninvited guests.

THEN

21 years ago Yoshi’s Story is released in the US

Is it nearly Christmas yet? Oh…

NOW Play Yoshi’s Crafted World on Switch

1st THEN

8th 101 years ago Panasonic is founded

TOEJAM & EARL: BACK IN THE GROOVE! Gaming’s alien rapping duo are back, and in a Kickstarter-funded sequel rather than a shiny remake. Expect randomly generated isometric levels, funky music and lots of weirdo enemies. 30

15th CAPTAIN MARVEL

NOW Panasonic releases S1 full-frame mirrorless cameras

It’s time for the Marvel franchise’s first female-led movie. And if you’re nerdy enough to have stayed for the post-credits scene in Avengers: Infinity War, you’ll know this movie is bound to hold some clues as to how Iron Man and co are going to tame Thanos.

AND TO CAPITOL OFF The game’s Washington DC is a faithful 1:1 representation of the real city.

THE DIVISION 2 The sequel to 2016’s (eventually) popular online action RPG shifts the action to Washington DC, and looks to provide a wider array of terrain, along with eight-player raids and character sub-classes that let you specialise in unique ways. And the first year of add-on content will be free for everyone.

ANANSI BOYS NEIL GAIMAN

Illustrated by FRANCIS VALLE J O | Introduced by NALO HO PKINS ON

Available exclusively from

foliosociety.com/anansi

ALSO AVAILABLE

AMERICAN GODS NEIL GAIMAN Illustrated by

Dave McKean

Buy Anansi Boys and get 20% off American Gods using code KSF624 Offer ends 30th March 2019 (T&Cs apply)

W I

RRP £699

RRP £399

WIN A SONOS BEAM SOUNDBAR AND SONOS SUB WORTH £1098! The better TVs look, the worse they sound. Why? Because wall-hugging skinniness, while it might be great for feng shui, is no good for generating enough power to fill your living room with the sound of Paul Robinson telling someone to shoot through. This, gentle reader, is why you need a soundbar… and, if you really want to feel the earth move when things start exploding, a subwoofer to go with it. The Sonos Beam (RRP £399) is not just a good soundbar. It’s been at the summit of our Top Ten for ages and, in the recent 2018 Stuff Awards, it scooped both Hi-Fi Gadget of the Year and overall Gadget of the Year. And here’s what we said about the £699 Sub: “In the world of subwoofers, the Sonos Sub is a work of art.” Say no more. This, then, is the audio setup your weedy TV is begging you for – and if you enter this month’s competition, you might just win it… More info: sonos.com

HOW TO ENTER For the chance to turn your telly into a sonic powerhouse, simply go to stuff.tv/win and answer this question:

WHICH OF THESE IS A PART OF THE HUMAN EAR? C … The cochlea B … The cricket bat A … The discarded shinpad of Gabriel Batistuta

HURRY!

COMPETITION CLOSES 28 MARCH 2019

Terms & conditions: 1 Open to UK residents aged 18 or over. 2 Entries close 11.59pm, 28 Mar 2019. 3 Prizes are as stated. 4 Prizes are non-transferable. 5 Only one entry per person. Full Ts & Cs: kelsey.co.uk/competition-terms-conditions/ Promoter: Kelsey Media Ltd, Cudham Tithe Barn, Berry’s Hill, Cudham, Kent TN16 3AG

SMART HOME TECH

POWER TO THE PEEPHOLE

GATEWAY DRUGS O AMAZON ALEXA

OO GOOGLE ASSISTANT

OOO APPLE HOMEKIT

The undisputed queen of the smart home, Alexa shows no sign of relinquishing her throne. Turn over for ways Alexaenabled devices could make your world run more smoothly.

So much more than a voice assistant for your phone, Google Assistant powers many of the latest devices. Its smart display and Wi-Fi mesh network are the connected cherry on top.

Apple keeps things simple by making your smart home work without you having to open countless apps, and keeps it safer with greater encryption. But the tech roster is still pretty small.

O THR BEF T EE ST HE

[ Words James Day, Chris Haslam, Leon Poultney]

The smart home is finally going from gimmicky to great in 2019, with genuinely ingenious and useful gadgets galore. You won’t find any Wi-Fi kettles, connected forks or Bluetooth plant pots here, only serious integrated kit that could make everyone’s home life better…

ONE ECHO OF A SHOW Is there an Echo in here? No matter, you don’t always need a smart speaker to use Alexa.

SMOOTH AI OPERATOR It doesn’t have a human name, but a chat with Google Assistant arguably feels the most natural.

APPSOLUTE SCENES Head for Home on Apple’s app to control all your accessories and automated scenes.

SMART HOME TECH

ECOSYSTEM AMAZON ALEXA

CLEAN SLATE You can give this KitchenAid a rinse under the tap if it gets really gunked, but no, it’s not dishwasher-safe.

COOKING UP A TREAT KITCHENAID SMART DISPLAY

Alexa products don’t need to be Amazon-branded. Some have Alexa built in, so she’ll do all your bidding including controlling devices. Others carry a ‘Works with Amazon Alexa’ badge, merely meaning they can be controlled by voice. She can be built into everything – you don’t necessarily need a smart speaker. It’s easy to add new devices on your Wi-Fi network.

With the launch of this 10in Google Assistant smart display, KitchenAid is hoping to take on the likes of the Lenovo Smart Display – with added features for the kitchen. This voice-controlled, call-making, YouTubewatching, hub-controlling screen is IPX5-rated so you don’t have to be precious about prodding it with sticky fingers. And it comes with Yummly, the Whirlpool-owned cooking assistant app (Whirlpool is KitchenAid’s parent company). It’s US-only for now, but we hope it arrives here soon. $250 (approx) / kitchenaid.co.uk

BEST FOR… The greatest depth of ‘Skills’ for controlling the products in your smart home.

SHOW AND TELL Smart displays make it easy to check the weather, turn off the heating and watch Netflix, all while you wash up

Google Assistant works like Alexa in that devices don’t have to be Google-branded, and they’re split between those with Assistant built in and those simply controlled by it. It’s the default AI butler on Android phones, so already in plenty of pockets, and it’s on plenty of other devices. Assistant sits in the Google Home app for smart home controls and general information requests. BEST FOR… Anyone using an Android phone or tablet, or operating within Google’s vast ecosphere.

SMART ALARM CLOCKS O LENOVO SMART CLOCK

OO AMAZON ECHO SPOT

OOO LAMETRIC TIME

Lenovo wants to place a smart assistant at your bedside with its latest offering, and its Google Assistant-operated Good Morning dashboard displays everything from upcoming meetings to that day’s weather forecast… all while you hide under the duvet. £65 (approx) / lenovo.com

Some might say this diddy device falls into the ‘smart speaker’ category, but we say its crystal-clear digital display and Alexa functionality make it perfect for drifting off to sleep with a good audiobook, turning down those smart lightbulbs or ordering a breakfast pizza. £120 / amazon.co.uk

Customising your clock used to mean choosing whether to display the time in 12hr or 24hr format, but LaMetric’s pixel-perfect Time takes thing to another level, allowing you to install apps from IFTTT, Philips Hue, Belkin’s Wemo and many, many more. £169 / lametric.com

O THR BEF T EE ST HE

ECOSYSTEM GOOGLE ASSISTANT

HUB GRUB

SMART HOME TECH

Cooking features are a compelling reason to buy a Home Hub, thanks to its visual features and step-by-step instructions.

ON WITH THE SHOW When not in use the Show displays the time, outside temperature and news headlines.

LOOK WHO’S TALKING Google Assistant’s voice match technology will recognise the unique tones of multiple users.

Amazon Echo Show

Google Home Hub

Lenovo Smart Display

Setting up smart home gadgets can be a pain in the router but the Echo Show makes it easy. As long as it’s Zigbee-compliant, saying: “Alexa, discover my devices” should pick it up. Swiping down shows icons for connected kit, plus there’s a menu to access your routines. Just remember you need the Alexa app to set up new ones. The 10in screen makes the Show a great companion for compatible security cameras or video doorbells, allowing you to use it as a visual intercom, and the display and capable speakers give the Show enough oomph to entertain. But in general it’s a bit bulkier than we’d like and the screen does feel underused. £220 / amazon.co.uk

While Amazon’s 10in Echo Show requires a sizeable space to live in, the 7in Google Home Hub is easier to accommodate. It puts its smaller screen to better use too, displaying search results, weather forecasts, music playback info and personal schedule details in a much cleaner, more accessible way, with big icons and text you can read from across a room. The interface is snappy and pictures look great, but a lack of screen real estate makes video less appealing. The same is true of audio, with tunes lacking punch. As an everyday assistant, though, the Google Home Hub has an affordable price and slots easily into home life. £139 / store.google.com

Lenovo’s smart slate could be seen as a larger version of the Google Home Hub, but with one difference: it has a camera. The 5MP 720p effort isn’t the best, but allows for video calls whether you opt for the 8in or 10in model, while turning it 90° for portrait mode conversations is handy when talking to someone on a smartphone. The display requires mains power, but it’s good for gathering around or checking in on the kids while you’re trying to make spaghetti carbonara. The design is an acquired taste, but the display is something you might well want to watch videos on or use as a digital photo frame. from £160 / lenovo.com

Stuff says Yet to make the most of its screen +++,,

Stuff says Stuff’s Smart Home Gadget of 2018 ++++,

Stuff says Strange styling but a worthy contender ++++,

SMART HOME TECH

ARLO ’ELLO ’ELLO Dual noise-cancelling microphones enable two-way conversations while suppressing background sounds.

HOUSE OF CARDS An Arlo subscription saves footage in Full HD, not 4K. You can pay for a 4K add-on, but we’d just save to an SD card.

ZONAL MARKING The Arlo app can set up specific areas to monitor or ignore, which will be a relief for the neighbours over the road.

Arlo Ultra £450 / arlo.com Frustrated at the lack of scheduled 4K content? Don’t despair, because Arlo has given us the perfect excuse to produce our own Ultra HD Crimewatch, Winterwatch, You’ve Been Framed and Big Brother. The Ultra is a 4K HDR wireless security camera with colour night vision, a 180° viewing angle, spotlight and siren, and

noise-cancelling microphones for indulging in all manner of voyeuristic tendencies. It’s by no means the first 4K security cam – and its launch has been held up by reports of firmware issues – but this is the first serious consumer effort and beats Nest, Hive and Ring to the punch. Arlo’s Pro series has long been a staple of our smart home Top 10, and the Ultra

shares a similarly elegant design, albeit elongated to accommodate the spotlight. We found installation to be easy and clutter-free, with only a magnetic charging cable to worry about. The real elephant in the room is the price tag… but consider the other onboard tech, along with the Ultra’s ability to recognise moving objects and adjust its frame

to focus, the audio and motion detection that sounds a siren, shines a spotlight or dials an emergency number, plus a year’s free subscription to Arlo’s premium service plan (worth £64) – and the Ultra should have your attention. KEY SPECS Battery life Up to 3 months Video 4K Dimensions 125x125x125mm, 318g

Stuff says Crystal-clear footage and intelligent monitoring win the day (and night) +++++ 38

LORD OF THE RING

THERE’S SOMEBODY AT THE DOOR…

Saying “Disarm Ring” prompts Alexa to ask you for a four-digit voice code.

RING ALARM Ring’s raison d’etre has always been to reduce crime – a 2015 Los Angeles Police Department pilot scheme found Ring’s doorbells reduced burglaries by as much as 55% – and with the launch of the Ring Alarm, the firm has created a complete security ecosystem with the same effortless usability as its doorbells. The affordable, easy-to-install Alarm ships with a base station, keypad, contact sensor, motion detector and range extender, and syncs with Ring’s security lights, sensors, smoke alarms, sirens and doorbells, feeding alerts to the app. $159 / ring.com

SMART HOME TECH

ECOSYSTEM WORKS WITH NEST Just to confuse matters, Google-owned Nest has its own platform. Primarily this is for Nest’s own growing range of kit, but it extends to other brands. The idea is that these gadgets circle back to Nest products in some way – so a Fitbit can control your thermostat, for example. Nest plays nicest with Google Assistant, then comes Alexa, but it’s indifferent to HomeKit. BEST FOR… Building a core smart home network based on, but not only using, Nest products.

SECURITY, GUYS Like an enlightened bachelor, smart home-watching has settled down with cameras, alarms and video doorbells

O THR BEF T EE ST HE

ECOSYSTEM APPLE HOMEKIT

VIDEO DOORBELLS O RING DOOR VIEW CAM Designed for apartment renters, the Ring Door View Cam covers existing peepholes and removes the need to hardwire or drill into door frames. As well as the peephole, you get Full HD video footage, an impact sensor alerting you if someone gets shirty and a motion sensor. £179 / ring.com

OO NETATMO SMART VIDEO DOORBELL Attracting admiring glances thanks to its compact design and microSD recording, Netatmo’s door-tinkler is touted for later this year. Get a live video feed on your phone every time the button is pushed. $330 (approx) / netatmo.com

OOO NEST HELLO This is arguably the best smart doorbell your cash can buy. Why? Because its 3MP sensor captures crisp Full HD footage during the day and clear infrared video at night. You’ll need a Nest Aware subscription to unlock facial recognition and 24/7 security recording, but plans start from £4 a month. £229 / nest.com

HomeKit and the Home app on Apple devices act as a basket for your smart home gadgets, so you can control them from one place without opening countless apps. Voice assistant Siri also plays a supporting role. The choice of kit isn’t as vast as Alexa or Google Assistant, but a lot of that is down to Apple’s strict encryption rules, which mean it takes longer for tech to trickle through. BEST FOR… Apple users looking to simplify smart home life and not always rely on a voice assistant.

SMART HOME TECH

ECOSYSTEM SAMSUNG SMARTTHINGS

TWINKLE, TWINKLE LITTLE STARS

WORK OF ART One of Sky’s most eye-catching animations is the ability to mimic the appearance of a mosaic.

LAMETRIC SKY We’ve clearly fallen for LED tiles, giving even the dodgiest bedsit a touch of Blade Runner cool; but with Sky, La Metric has gone one better thanks to the functional smarts added to its geometric panels. Aside from displaying any colours in any sequence via the app, Sky can also tap into social media stats to display metrics – how many people liked your last post, for instance – giving the light patterns a whole new meaning. You’ll also be able to visualise the weather, sunrise, sunset and Sonos playlists, while shouting at it through Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant. £tba / lametric.com

Samsung’s virtual assistant Bixby has its own curious platform, SmartThings. You start with a SmartThings Hub, then add devices like locks, lights, cameras, doorbells, thermostats, speakers and sensors. Regardless of Bixby, you can use Google Assistant or Alexa, and the SmartThings app is available for Android, iOS and Apple Watch. BEST FOR… Samsung smartphone, appliance or TV owners seeking a wider circle.

LIGHT IT UP Smart lights can provide serenity and security in the home, but there are extra sensory experiences on offer as well

Vodafone’s platform is powered by SmartThings, but this is no mere carbon copy – plus the network claims to have the largest dedicated IoT network of its kind in the world. To play in Voda’s sandpit you pay an up-front fee followed by a monthly sub of £2-4 per product. Each device uses a ‘V-Sim by Vodafone’; the kit includes cameras, sensors and alarms. BEST FOR… Vodafone users, naturally, but large groups or families on the same mobile network.

SMART LIGHTBULBS O LIFX A60 Fitting a LIFX A60 is as easy as changing a lightbulb. No, really. Whether Edison screw or bayonet cap, the bulbs connect to the Wi-Fi network and spark 16 million colours into life. The LIFX app offers numerous effects and everything plays nicely with HomeKit, Amazon, Google and Nest. £55 / uk.lifx.com

OO NANOLEAF SMART IVY Another contender for the ‘couldn’t be simpler’ crown, Nanoleaf’s bargain bulbs are claimed to be the world’s most efficient, with a 27-year lifespan and a 7.5W light producing the equivalent of a 60W incandescent. Zigbee smarts add dimming and nightlight modes. £10 / nanoleaf.me

OOO PHILIPS HUE Hue’s new outdoor range has landed, but indoors is still where it’s at for the admittedly expensive yet best connected lighting system on the planet. A starter kit bundles three bulbs, a bridge hub and a remote dimmer. The sheer number of programmable smarts and compatible platforms is ludicrous. £170 / meethue.com

O THR BEF T EE ST HE

ECOSYSTEM V BY VODAFONE

EXTEND YOURSELF The starter kit comes with nine light squares, with four-tile expansion packs set to follow.

PRESSING ENGAGEMENT The Control Square lets you power on and off, switch colour scenes and adjust brightness.

LIGHTBULB MOMENT Programme Canvas to turn on when you enter the room, give visual calendar reminders and more.

Nanoleaf Canvas from £180 / nanoleaf.me Canvas doesn’t just reimagine what lights should look like; it throws the entire handbook out of the window. Forget fittings, forget bulbs, forget lamps… this system uses touch-controlled 6in tiles to cover entire walls, ceilings or tabletops and provide a feast for the senses. The edge-to-edge LED panels are lightweight and modular, which makes them

easy to group together or create patterns. Up to 500 can be supported by a single Control Square, via the accompanying app, or by asking Google Assistant, Alexa or Siri. As with regular smart lights you can set schedules and visual alarms, or enable music visualisations for illuminations in time to your tunes. Games are due to get a look in too, with

versions of Pac-Man, Candy Crush and Whack-A-Mole arriving later this year. If Canvas sounds rather clunky, it shouldn’t. At 0.5in thick and 170g each, tile dimensions and weight are entirely comparable with its porcelain or ceramic bredrins, and they have a marble-like finish. Clipping them together is also far easier than filling, spacing and grouting. In most

cases, panels can be fitted over existing surfaces, and even though a screw kit is recommended for mounting to masonry or concrete, Stuff’s plastered walls were easy pickings with a dollop of double-sided sticky tape. KEY SPECS Colours 16.4 million Power 1W Cable 2.5m Dimensions 150x150x13mm, 170g

Stuff says Proof that it really is hip to be square – we wish all walls were this lit +++++ 41

SMART HOME TECH

SIGNS OF LIFE The E’s sensors detect temperature, humidity, ambient light and proximity/ occupancy.

HOTLY CREW The Thermostat E works with Google Assistant and the Home Hub, and is IFTTT-compliant.

HOT HOT HEAT An extra temperature sensor and an override button are included on the Heat Link E as a backup.

Nest Thermostat E £199 / nest.com Controlling your heating from anywhere and using intelligent schedules to lower bills is why the Nest Learning Thermostat has been a UK bestseller for five years. The Thermostat E is a cheaper alternative that can be self-installed and placed anywhere. Made from white polycarbonate, it retains the same dial interface and userfriendly controls, but features

a smaller frosted display with glowing graphics. Also in the box is a battery-powered Heat Link E that must be wired to your boiler. A Q&A on the Nest app guides you through installation and takes under 45 minutes. It’s the Heat Link E that turns your heating on or off and is controlled by the Thermostat E or Nest app. The former can be moved

from room to room, taking the temperature provided it’s plugged in, while the latter stops you getting out of bed. Achievement unlocked. From there, set your own schedule, let it build a history of your habits, or use the pre-loaded timetable based on users’ data. The clever features keep coming – True Radiant guesstimates when a room will reach your desired

temp and shut off the boiler, and Home/Away Assist uses your phone’s location to toggle in and out of Eco mode when you’re coming and going. KEY SPECS Display 320x320 45mm LCD Sensors Temperature, humidity, light, movement Connectivity Wi-Fi Dimensions 94x82x82mm, 408g

Stuff says A supreme smart thermostat, but not necessarily the best Nest for you ++++, 42

HONEYBOON

DESIGN OF THE TIMES HONEYWELL T6

Honeywell’s T6 is compatible with multiple ecosystems: Amazon, Google Home, Apple HomeKit and IFTTT.

Winner of a coveted Red Dot Design Award, the Honeywell T6 – and wireless T6R – slashes bills, saves energy and makes staying warm a whole lot more convenient. It’s simple to install – the wired version simply replaces your old greying box on the wall – and you’re instantly treated to all the good stuff: remote heating control via the Honeywell app; accurate hourly heat schedules; advanced learning like a Nest; and geo-fencing so it knows when the last person has left the house and switches the heat off. from £149 / get connected. honeywellhome.com/en

SMART HOME TECH

ECOSYSTEM HIVE What started out as the remote connected arm of British Gas now encompasses security cameras, lights, smart plugs, hubs and sensors. Creating your own automations is fairly painless with the Hive app and, despite the lack of HomeKit support, you’re not roadblocked by Google Assistant or Alexa; even though buying Hive-only products is preferred, you won’t be hamstrung. BEST FOR… Flying the British flag with a family of products that’s likely to increase in scale and sophistication.

ALL YOU CAN HEAT Smart thermostats include established brands Honeywell and Hive battling noisy upstarts such as Netatmo and Tado

O BE REF T ST ST HE

ECOSYSTEM IFTTT

THERMOSTATS O HIVE ACTIVE HEATING

OO NETATMO SMART THERMOSTAT

OOO TADO SMART THERMOSTAT

Hive’s handsome unit might not learn your homely habits, but it is IFTTT-programmable via an app, while Alexa compatibility comes as standard. Better still, geolocation and holiday scheduling are easy to set up, plus it’ll integrate with other Hive products. £180 / hivehome.com

Using an always-on E Ink display, Netatmo’s wired or wireless thermostat can integrate with its Weather Station for an insanely accurate atmospheric reading, which is great when the weather is changeable. It’s HomeKit, Google Home and Amazon-friendly. £150 / netatmo.com

Tado might not have the marketing might of Nest or Hive, but its cute smart thermostat can pair with additional smart radiator valves for the ultimate control over your home’s heating. It’s on friendly terms with Alexa, Google Assistant and Apple HomeKit. £200 / tado.com

Standing for ‘If This Then That’, IFTTT has been working away for a long time now while Google and co steal the headlines. It acts as a kind of mediator for numerous platforms and gadgets to talk to each other and trigger responses. Formerly labelled recipes, these actions are now called applets and can even stretch to Gmail or Facebook for stuff like backing up photos. BEST FOR… Workarounds that can’t be achieved using your devices’ out-of-the-box features.

SMART HOME TECH

ECOSYSTEM STRINGIFY

TWICE AS NICE The Lyra’s twin 8W stereo speakers are no afterthought, benefitting from DTS surround sound technology.

FIREWALL OF SOUND ASUS LYRA VOICE Asus is getting into the Alexa game, squeezing in two stereo speakers and 360° far-field voice detection to its Lyra mesh router. Enjoy enhanced online connectivity at home – and to save you cluttering up the sideboard with multiple gadgets, it will also do as it’s told and play your music via Wi-Fi, Bluetooth or Spotify Connect. The new router will feature 802.11ac (Wi-Fi 5), and three Wi-Fi modes working as an AiMesh router or node, as a standalone router and as a universal Wi-Fi repeater, giving you a wide choice of options for improving your wireless signal. $220 / asus.com

The clue is in the title with this award-winning Android and iOS app that’s designed to string your smart home together. First add a device, called a ‘Thing’, then add some more. Then include them in a ‘Flow’. A Flow is an action (like ‘Leave for work’) and it can trigger more than one Thing – say, switching off the heating and turning on your security camera. Simple, eh? BEST FOR… Adding a pinch of IFTTT personalisation to devices on different platforms.

ANOTHER FINE MESH The battle for your broadband is about to intensify, so prepare for the smart home invasion with a mesh network

5G, ANYONE? O D-LINK 5G NR Don’t get confused by 5G and 5GHz. One is an incoming cellular service, the other is an established home Wi-Fi frequency. If 5G does what it says on the tin, it could mean internet speeds 40x faster than average fixed-line broadband. D-Link’s router is designed to cope with that rapid data transfer. £tba / dlink.com 44

A rival to Stringify, Yonomi aims to get a menagerie of different smart home devices working with each other. Download the app for iOS or Android, use it with Alexa or Google Home, and even add it to your smartwatch. It works pretty much like Stringify, with ‘Things’ for gadgets and ‘Routines’ for actions. There are more controls than you’ll find on the big three platforms. BEST FOR… Waking up like you’re in Wallace and Gromit and getting more from your smart home.

MESH NETWORKS O GOOGLE WIFI

OO LINKSYS VELOP

The days of the router are numbered: it’s time for a mesh-up. Google WiFi is beautiful in its simplicity. Buy as many hockey-puck mesh nodes as you need and dot them around key locations indoors. Scan a QR code and off you go. Tuned to 802.11 Wi-Fi 5, it scores well for security and user-friendliness. £129 / store.google.com

The tower-like nodes of the tri-band Linksys Velop work in much the same way as Google WiFi, with some clever smarts that continually self-organise and optimise to offer the best connectivity. You also have the ability to assign preferential treatment to individual devices – your PlayStation, for example. from £100 / linksys.com

O TW BEF T O ST HE

ECOSYSTEM YONOMI

SMART HOME TECH

VOICE CITY Once you’ve setup your mesh network, additional Orbi Voice smart speakers will cost £279 each.

CONNECT FOUR Each speaker features four far-field microphones for picking up Alexa requests.

WHO’S THE DADDY? The Orbi app includes smart parental controls for filtering content and limiting the time kids spend online.

Netgear Orbi Voice £430 / netgear.co.uk We first spied Netgear’s clever integration of Wi-Fi mesh technology into wireless multiroom speakers at last year’s IFA tech show in Berlin, and broke out in excited sweats. Short of sending us deodorant, the brand has done the next best thing and sent Stuff the first sample to land on these shores. Why do we care? Because mesh

networks are brilliant – stick nodes around the house and they boost your Wi-Fi wherever it’s needed most. But other than taking up space, nodes don’t do much else… so shoehorning them inside a multiroom speaker with Amazon Alexa smarts makes brilliant sense. Netgear has partnered with Harman Kardon to ensure sound quality is on point, and

the result is the Orbi Voice, a combined router and speaker about 8in high. The speaker is covered in acoustic fabric, and while it’s not the prettiest, it’s no different to many rivals. The sound from the 3.5in front-facing woofer and a 1in tweeter can’t quite match that of a Sonos Play:1 but it’s nothing to be sniffed at and supports streaming from Spotify, Amazon Music,

Pandora, iHeartRadio, TuneIn and Deezer among others. The mesh part drapes a blanket of 802.11ac 3Gbps tri-band Wi-Fi using FastLane 3 technology from Netgear’s Nighthawk gaming routers. KEY SPECS Range 4500sq ft Drivers Woofer, tweeter Dimensions 170x79x225mm, 889g

Stuff says The logical next step for minimalists who want multiroom audio ++++, 45

SMART HOME TECH

CHEESE BOARD A ‘Family Board’ lets users leave notes or post photos. We’d like to see these as standard issue in student dorms.

DOOR BLIMEY

Samsung Family Hub 4.0

The Family Hub pings your phone if you’ve left the fridge door open… but you’ll still need to come home and close it.

£tba / samsung.com The fourth-generation Family Hub fridge has so many features, it’s easy to forget there’s a hugely efficient appliance lurking behind the massive touchscreen to keep your fishfingers frost-free and your kombucha cold. But you want to know about how Samsung has incorporated Bixby’s Voice ID, which can identify each member of the household and tailor responses accordingly, and even chat with the assistant to book an Uber.

You also need to know about the new AKG-tuned speakers for kitchen parties, and its ability to work as the heart of Samsung’s SmartThings ecosystem, giving control to your smart lights, cameras, thermostats… not forgetting the built-in HD camera that enables you to check the contents while you’re in the supermarket and even use the new Meal Planner to create recipes out of what’s inside, like your very own AI hairy biker.

KITCHEN & KHAZI The smart home is growing up, so it’s only right we end with talking fridges and ‘fully immersive’ toilets ECOSYSTEM LOGITECH

ECOSYSTEM WINK HUB

Logitech has a range of Harmony hubs and remotes that act as universal controls for everything smart home and entertainment. Activities can be programmed so multiple devices are scheduled to work at once or with a single tap: think multiroom speakers switching on with your video games console. Everything works with Alexa, Google Assistant and most big brands.

The Wink Hub is a pretty unassuming piece of kit that just sits there quietly going about its business as an aggregator for the main smart home ecosystems. The result is you no longer have to pledge allegiance to one particular platform, owing to the fact that it supports more protocols than you shake a connected stick at, including Zigbee, Bluetooth LE, Wi-Fi, Z-Wave and Kidde.

BEST FOR… Muggles without access to a magic wand or storage space for 16 different remotes.

BEST FOR… Letting someone else sort out the mess you (and lots of others) have got yourself in.

GAME OF THRONES O KOHLER NUMI 2.0 An Alexa-enabled lavatory with surround-sound speakers, ambient smart lighting, a touchscreen remote and a seat-warmer sounds ridiculous, but we promise we’re not yanking your chain. IoT becomes ‘Internet of Toilet’ as you ask Alexa to adjust the water temperature, pressure and more. $8000 / kohler.co.uk

OO TOTO NEOREST NX2 If antagonising Alexa threatens to lead to irritable bowl syndrome, the Neorest NX2 does away with voice assistants and provides a sort of integrated bidet: it cleanses with warm water and an air drier while your cheeks remain nestled on the heated seat. $13,000 / toto.com

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TESTED APPS

Mini meme

O Beat Street Evil gangs rule the roost in Toko City and it’s down to you to take them out. This retro brawler has more than a hint of Double Dragon about it, but there’s no joystick and buttons here – you only need a single digit to move, dish out punches, hurl goons around and unsportingly smack enemies about the head with a baseball bat. The music’s pretty punchy too. Stuff says +++++ £free (IAPs) / Android, iOS

FEELGOOD HITS OF THE THUMBER If you want some top-notch mobile gaming but only have a single thumb to spare, these six crackers will keep you amused during that tedious commute

O Silly Walks John Cleese has nothing on the tottering hero of this oddball effort. It centres on a bipedal pineapple cocktail trying to save his fruity chums from the blender, which means surviving kitchens full of deranged appliances and deadly cutlery, and gardens packed with furious mowers, hoses and chainsaws. Tap to plant your feet, and dodder for your life. Stuff says ++++, £free / Android, iOS

O Look, Your Loot!

O Pocket Run Pool

O Time Locker

O Reigns: Game

This one packs a dungeon crawler into a single screen. You swipe to move about the grid, grabbing bling, discovering loot and getting all stabby when encountering enemies. Fortunately, you can stash goodies (spells and weapons) in a bag. You’ll need them to defeat vicious bosses that lob fireballs across the grid, like massive cheats. Stuff says +++++ £free / Android, iOS

Reasoning that solo pool is like playing against a god, Pocket Run ditches the computer opponent and pits you against rotating bonus pockets. It also demands that you never miss a shot – three mistakes and your game ends. This forces you to strategise and balance amazing trick shots with the safety of actually getting to pot all your balls. Stuff says ++++, £free / iOS

Overhead bullet-hell shooters have made themselves at home on mobile because they’re well suited to the form factor of phones and the precision of touchscreens. Time Locker shakes things up by stopping when you do. This lets you rethink tactics at any given moment… but a world-eating void immune to time-locks is always in hot pursuit. Stuff says ++++, £free / Android, iOS

Try to tame the Seven Kingdoms with the power of your thumb. After plonking your behind on the Iron Throne, you swipe left and right in response to questions and demands, trying to balance the favour of the people, church, army and bank. Annoy any of them a bit too much and you’ll be killed quicker than you can say ‘Sean Bean’. Stuff says ++++, £3.19 / Android O £3.99 / iOS

of Thrones

STUFF PROMOTION

HOME SECURITY MADE SIMPLE

Available from Amazon

D-Link’s new wireless camera kit takes the hassle out of home surveillance to give you peace of mind without compromise

Product code: DCS-2802KT-EU

hen it comes to home surveillance, worrying about wires, sockets and complicated installation should be the last thing on your mind. Whether you’re adding cameras to your home to improve security or you just want to keep an eye on the dog, simplicity is in and compromise is out. D-Link has introduced its first wire-free camera package to ensure you get just that. The mydlink Pro Wire-Free Camera Kit offers you home surveillance on your terms, with ease and flexibility at its heart. And with no wires to worry about, not to mention an IP65 weatherproof certification, you can put a

camera wherever you need one – indoors or outdoors – with up to six months’ operation from a single charge. With 1080p HD resolution, a 140° wide-angle lens and 4x digital zoom, you won’t miss a single thing – and the kit comes with free cloud recording for a year, worth £45. Shot in the dark Night vision is on hand to serve up crystal-clear images, even in complete darkness, while two-way audio lets you listen in to your camera, as well as talk back when needed. Handy for telling the postman where to leave your parcel when you’ve nipped out. Advanced motion

detection ensures the camera knows the difference between a gust of wind and a potential security concern too, meaning fewer false alarms. When it does see something suspicious, the camera will start recording automatically, with instant mobile alerts via the free mydlink app keeping you in the know at every step. To top it off, D-Link’s wireless cameras slot in with almost any existing smart home setup you might have. Whether that’s Amazon Alexa, Google Assistant or IFTTT, the mydlink Pro WireFree Camera Kit offers a smarter, more convenient way to do home surveillance, and puts peace of mind at your fingertips.

KEY FEATURES ONE The hub supports up to four cameras TWO 100% wire-free operation gives you flexibility of placement THREE Ultra-low standby power offers up to six months’ battery life between charges FOUR D-Link’s Premium Cloud recording is included for 12 months FIVE Weatherproofing to IP65 means you can install cameras outside

DIGITAL EDITION

Available from the App Store, Google Play Newsstand and Kindle Newsstand

FIRST TEST DEVIALET PHANTOM REACTOR 900

The sonic hedgehog A nozzle-free Dyson? A giant earbud? A sleeping robo-mammal? Nope, it’s the Devialet Phantom Reactor 900 wireless speaker, and it wants to shake your walls… £1290 / stuff.tv/Reactor900

otion pictures. The parachute. Aspirin. Denim. All these world-changing, life-enhancing innovations are French. And since 2015, when the first Devialet Phantom was launched, it’s been possible to add ‘wildly over-powerful wireless speakers that look like they’re trying to

[ Words Simon Lucas ]

take flight’ to the list of French initiatives that the world would be poorer without. Until recently, Devialet’s modus operandi seemed as simple as its products are complicated. Its Phantom speakers, for example, are uniquely styled, staggeringly muscular and tuned to generate enough bass to crack the

plaster on your walls. They’re also witheringly expensive. Lately, though, there seems to have been an outbreak of sensibleness at the firm’s Paris headquarters. The collaboration with Sky for the Soundbox, for example, brought the brand within reach of the mainstream. And now there’s the Phantom Reactor 900. By Devialet’s

standards it’s small, affordable and modestly powered. OK, by anyone else’s standards it’s compact-ish, quite pricey and, with 900 Watts on tap, crazily brawny; but it still brings the possibility of Devialet ownership to those who’d until now only been able to press their faces against the glass of the brand’s Selfridges and Harrods displays.

FIRST TEST DEVIALET PHANTOM REACTOR 900

Lump ’n’ grind

Look at it. It could only be a Devialet. Even though it’s roughly a quarter of the size of the full-on Phantoms, there’s no mistaking this glossy speaker for anyone else’s product. At 4.3kg the unit feels as sturdy as it looks, and the construction is flawless.

2 All fins must pass Unlike the bigger models in the range, this is a single-piece cabinet, with a decorative grille (covering a 3cm aluminium driver) at one end and heat-dispersing fins at the other. On either side are covered woofers, each a 10cm aluminium dome.

4 Up out my bass

3 Watt goes boom The Reactor 900 is bristling with tech: 160 patents gives some idea of the thinking that’s gone into extracting 900 Watts of power from an enclosure of this size. It’s delivered by hybrid Class A and Class D amplification with an embedded 24-bit/192kHz DAC.

5 She’s bossed control

Do you like acronyms? This thing has an Active Cospherical Engine (which is definitely not just a way of getting ‘ACE’ onto the spec sheet), Speaker Active Matching (SAM) and – best of all – Heart Bass Implosion (HBI). What does any of it mean? Ah, who cares…

On the outside, features are kept to a minimum. There are five touch controls: play/pause, volume up, volume down, setup (for use with the control app) and Bluetooth pairing. At the rear, you’ll find a few physical inputs and a power/standby/reset button.

Good Meh Evil

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24 hours with the Phantom Reactor 900

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FIRST TEST DEVIALET PHANTOM REACTOR 900

Tech specs 1

Output power 900 Watts Drivers One 3cm full-range driver, two 10cm woofers Connectivity Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, AirPlay, Spotify Connect, Ethernet, analogue/optical jack Dimensions 219x168x157mm, 4.3kg

Tonal eclipse of the heart We could stare at this thing all day… but we should probably try playing some music through it as well

L th et’s at g ’s ive so i m ta e s pr er op T io er us w ab urn ly or ou it po ko u tl p w ut ike lo er … u it’ d fu w s t an l b ow ry d as , Bu t ing h s. e no t t to w t j his o ta o us i ke fe ta sa of rs j ba pro f. um ss p p e I’ fe r h st im mm . fi e us o xp ic vin is g er fo ar ie llo ou nc w n e, ing d m the It e f ro vo can ait om lu s hf a m ou ul nd es n ly t ,t dc . h ho o e ug ng e h. st ed at hi gh er

3hrs

5hrs

14hrs

18hrs

Q Moving waves

Q Pearl’s a singer

Devialet has gone straight for the jugular with the Phantom Reactor 900… and it’s a jugular that’s composed entirely of fast, deep, hard-hitting bass. Crank it up and watch the low-end drivers flap.

There’s no arguing with this speaker’s low-end authority, but it’s very faithful across the rest of the frequency range, revealing lots of detail in vocals and nuances of timbre in instruments.

Q It’s oh so quieter

Q Space oddity

Dynamism is impressive too, switching cleanly from thunder to silence so a loud/quiet/loud classic like Smells Like Teen Spirit brims with excitement. It has no problems filling a large-ish room.

What it can’t do, however, is generate a convincing soundstage. For all of its powers of resolution, it sounds cramped and confined. This means things can too easily get oppressive.

The Devialet Phantom Reactor 900 has an awful lot going for it. In broad terms it sounds impressive, it looks supremely dramatic when it’s at work, and it’s impressively well made. But it doesn’t have the all-court sonic game a speaker of this cost really should have, and that makes it easier to admire than to love. @OnlySimonLucas

STUFF SAYS ++++, An idiosyncratic wireless speaker that sounds a lot less bonkers than it looks

24hrs 55

FIRST TEST DEVIALET PHANTOM REACTOR 900

The alternatives: 3 luxury wireless speakers Sound that’s as good to look at as it is to listen to, throughout the home BEST FOR BUILD QUALITY

BEST FOR DESKTOPS

KEF LSX

BEST FOR DESIGN

Naim Mu-so

Beosound 1

£1000 (pair) / uk.kef.com

£995 / naimaudio.com

£1250 / bang-olufsen.com

What’s the story? KEF’s rather splendid LS50 speakers were such a success they’ve made a pair half the size and half the price. They come clad with Kvadrat acoustic fabric in a swathe of swanky colours, and offer plenty of port and wireless connectivity including AirPlay 2 with Siri support, Spotify Connect and Tidal – via not one but two dedicated KEF apps.

What’s the story? Incredibly, the Mu-so turns five this year; but despite being born in a land before Brexit it’s still going strong and being treated to incremental improvements. The hi-res all-in-one music system now supports Apple AirPlay 2 with Siri for multiroom capabilities and voice smarts, all while pushing out 450W of power from six drivers.

What’s the story? Compact, conical and crafted from aluminium, the latest Beosound 1 is a premium portable smart speaker now with Google Assistant and 360° sound. Designed to sit anywhere in the home, it features tactile tap, turn and swipe controls, Chromecast and AirPlay 2 connectivity, and 12 hours of battery time for impromptu garden raves.

Is it any good? There’s more to these KEFs than cost-cutting and pretty colours. The company has taken a good hi-res speaker and carefully redesigned it to create something that looks, feels and sounds like something far more expensive. The only area where they don’t truly smash it is pretty predictable: dynamic reach is slightly stunted.

Is it any good? ‘Timeless classic’ might be pushing it, but from the premium brushed aluminium finish, exceptional amp and speaker array, and a totally dreamy tactile control dial illuminated in bright white light, the Mu-so oozes class from every conceivable angle. Its weighty lack of portability and mains-only operation are the only downsides.

Is it any good? B&O is one of those brands where you can’t help but question the price at first… but the second you clap eyes and ears on the product, everything becomes clear. The Beosound 1 looks like no other multiroom speaker and all-round sound ensures you’re constantly immersed. Add in the latest voice smarts and battery-powered freedom, and this is a speaker that earns its spurs.

KEY SPECS Output power 200W Drivers 4.5in low/mid, 0.75in tweeter Connectivity Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, AirPlay 2, Ethernet, aux in, subwoofer out Dimensions 240x180x155mm, 3.6kg & 3.5kg

KEY SPECS Output power 450W Drivers Two tweeters, two mids, two bass drivers Connectivity Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, AirPlay 2, DLNA, Ethernet, aux in, optical, USB Dimensions 122x628x256mm, 13kg

KEY SPECS Output power 60W Drivers 1.5in full-range, 4in woofer Connectivity Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, Chromecast, AirPlay 2, Ethernet Dimensions 162x327mm, 3.5kg

Stuff says +++++

Cool colours, compact dimensions and detailed sound

Superb sound, strong on features and luxuriously finished

An immersive and iconic smart speaker to blow the budget on

GET THE BEST GADGET DEALS WITH STUFF

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Ever wondered what’s up with the links in Stuff? We’ve got a team of retail pros who scour the web to find you the best gadget deals – visit any stuff.tv link in this issue and you’ll be taken to the best deal for that product. If you make a purchase, we may get a small commission. It’s that simple, and has no impact on how much you pay.

CITRUS SQUEEZERS

CENTRIFUGAL SQUISHERS

MASTICATING MASHERS

UPVOTED

The quiet crusher

The sloth-like saviour

The gaping guzzler

Smeg SJF01CRUK Slow Juicer Smeg’s retro beauty brings plenty of style and substance to the juicing table. While its quiet 150W motor mushes up all your fruit and veg so your tired teeth can sit back and watch telly, you can adjust the density level to help you get your juice at just the right texture and consistency to suit your tastes. £500 / johnlewis.com

JR Ultra 8000 S2 Whole Slow Juicer The ‘Slow’ bit in the name may be a dead giveaway, but what sets apart JR’s Ultra 8000 S2 in the slow-juicing world is just how gently it goes. It squeezes out juicy goodness at just 37rpm, reducing the amount of oxygen that gets into your greens so you hold onto more nutrients. £425 / juicyretreats.com

Omega MMV7O2S Mega Mouth Slow Juicer For a slow juicer, Omega’s MMV can make short work of your recalcitrant carrots. It only runs at 60rpm, but the wide feed chute means it can churn through big portions more quickly. And thanks to its compact vertical design, you also save kitchen space. £399 / ukjuicers.com

JUICERS The pulp presser Dualit Dual-Max Juicer Dualit’s affordable number uses two sieves to squeeze out all the juice from your fruit and veg then blitz any remaining pulp to really help you get your fill. Complete with a dual-speed 800W motor to tackle both hard and soft stuff, this is a great one for novices and fruitarian fundamentalists alike. £100 / dualit.com

The texture tweaker KitchenAid Artisan Fast Centrifugal Juicer Is your family split over ‘bits or no bits’ like other families are split over Brexit? This juicer has an adjustable pulp screen with three settings, so you can make your drinks as thick or as smooth as you like. It also has an extra-wide feeding chute for whole fruits. £299 / kitchenaid.co.uk

The budget blitzer

The helpful handler

The quiet quencher

Kenwood Citrus Juicer JE290 Sure, you could spend all afternoon concocting the perfect blend of lychee, papaya and celery. But if you just want pure orange juice, Kenwood’s dead-cheap eﬀort will see to it. With a 1-litre transparent jug for easy pouring and a 40W motor, it’s also dishwasher-safe. £33 / kenwoodworld.com

Hurom Auto Citrus Juicer If you’d rather get your vitamin C boost without risking stains on your brand new Little Mix T-shirt, Hurom’s automatic citrus juicer comes with a spring-hinged handle that presses down on the fruit for you, and an adjustable spout for precise pouring. The body’s made of stainless steel. £79 / juicers.co.uk

Tribest Citri Star Citrus Juicer Pressure-activated, with a stainless steel sieve to prevent any stray pips from spoiling your perfect breakfast, this citrus juicer has a quiet motor and can handle larger items like grapefruit. It also has a lockable spout so you won’t accidentally pour your dregs all over the cat. £60 / juicers.co.uk

how to decide… 58

Want to liquify your fruit and veg to get your daily ﬁll of nutrients? Well , orange you glad Heather Wald is here to guide you through the land of juicing…

1 Spin class Centrifugal juicers are a good option if you want to juice hard root vegetables or whole fruits. But while they are faster, the heat generated in the process can lose you some nutrients.

2 Daily grind Masticating juicers cost more, but they can also be used to make nut butter, grind coﬀee beans and make sauces. They’ll extract more nutrients from fruit than centrifugal types.

UPVOTED

The speedy squasher Sage Nutri Juicer Plus When a juicer has maverick nerd-chef Heston Blumenthal behind it, you just know it’s going to be a bit diﬀerent. This centrifugal juicer can blast a whole apple in seconds thanks to its powerful 1300W motor and extra-large chute. Sage claims the lack of contact time between the fruit and the machinery means all the nutrients stay packed into the juice. It has an LCD display, and comes with a soft fruit disc for turning bananas and mangoes into purees and dairy-free smoothies. Add bacon and squid tentacles to taste. £200 / johnlewis.com

3 Nice spread Some juicers take up a lot of room with their assorted attachments. If you have a small kitchen, look for a vertical option to save worktop space.

4 Kumquats are not the only fruit Have you thought about what you’ll actually be juicing? Wheatgrass, for example, is better suited to masticaters; but if you just want a fresh glass of OJ, a basic citrus juicer will sort you out.

VERSUS ANDROID PHONES

Honors even? Having scotched the notch, Huawei’s sub-brand is offering two different ways to house your selfie cam. The punch-hole powerhouse takes on the slider star…

[ Words Andrew Williams ]

Honor View 20

Honor Magic2

What’s the story?

The View 20 is the first phone we’ve used with a punch-hole display: a less intrusive alternative to the notch that has the front cam sitting in a little hole in the corner of the screen. More importantly, this is the first Honor handset that feels like a proper could-take-on-a-flashy-Samsung flagship. You get advanced photo skills, superb battery life and a great screen… plus that rare treat, a headphone port.

Notches are so last year, and some phone fans can’t even stomach a tiny camera sullying their virtually bezel-less display. Sorry about that, View 20. So this is the end of the selfie era, right? Hardly. Push up with your fingers on the Honor Magic2’s back and the whole rear slides upwards to reveal not one but three selfie cameras, while the fingerprint scanner is beneath the screen.

Is it any good?

With no notch, you can make videos fill the View 20’s entire display: put a 2.39:1 movie on there and you’ll get an actual screen area similar to a 7in 16:9 display. That sounds great, but of course you do have to put up with that black hole in the corner. The screen isn’t the sharpest, and it’s not OLED, but there’s a super-punchy colour mode and another with more natural-looking colours. Honor’s EMUI interface is now known as Magic UI, and it’s no longer bad at all. We’ve no complaints about performance either. This phone is fast and apps load quickly. The rear camera uses one of Sony’s new 48MP sensors. With a bright scene and a steady hand, the amount of detail it can capture is sensational.

The Magic2 is the most screen-packed mobile from any major company: a 6.39in monster whose AMOLED panel offers Full HD resolution. It’s as sharp as the OnePlus 6T, colours are vivid, and contrast is just about perfect. However, this isn’t an official UK phone, which is why it runs a tweaked version of the Huawei user interface called Magic 2.0. You can think of it as the Huawei interface made rubbish again like it used to be – out of the box there are no Google apps, no Play Store and no Gmail. At least you get the super-quick Kirin 980 chipset; and while the Magic2 isn’t a photographic genius like the Huawei Mate 20 Pro, it is a trooper that can go head to head with any phone at the price.

Price from £500 / stuff.tv/View20 Tech 6.4in LCD display O Kirin 980 O 6GB/8GB RAM O 48MP + ‘3D’ rear, 25MP front O 4000mAh O 128GB/256GB O 157x75x8.1mm, 180g

Price from £579 / stuff.tv/Magic2 Tech 6.39in AMOLED display O Kirin 980 O 6GB/8GB RAM O 16MP + 24MP + 16MP rear, 16MP + 2MP + 2MP front O 3400mAh O 128GB/256GB O 157x75x8.3mm, 206g

Stuff says +++++

Stuff says +++,,

Honor enters the big leagues with one of the most impressive phones in its class

Not for everyone… but this quirky phone shows what a notch-free future looks like

OR THERE’S THIS…

Xiaomi Mi Mix 3 from £500 / stuff.tv/MiMix3 The Magic2 isn’t the only slider in town; Xiaomi’s Mi Mix 3 does the same trick, and has a 6.4in OLED screen that takes up over 93% of its front face. Its rear 12MP telephoto and wide-angle cameras produce bold images during the day and even hold up fairly well at night, but the Honor View 20 pips it in a few areas. A Snapdragon 845 CPU and 6GB of RAM ensure silky performance, but the 3200mAh battery may have you reaching for the wireless charger before bedtime.

Stuff says ++++,

VERSUS ANDROID PHONES

1 1 Put your game face(s) on

2 Watts going on

The Magic2 has an AR mode that lets you paste 3D JPRG characters onto your shots. Oh, and unicorns. Perhaps it goes down a storm in China.

The 40W charger gets you from flat to full in about 90 minutes. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s snappy, but not notably quicker than other fast-charge phones.

TES WI T NN ER 2

3 Gloom service The rear cameraâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s night mode, which takes several seconds to capture an image, works brilliantly. In all conditions, the View 20 nails its shots.

4 Energy giant Battery life is excellent. You can use the View 20 liberally and still have more than 40% charge left when you microwave your Horlicks.

T E S T E D M O B V O I T I C WAT C H S 2

Tic all the boxes If you refuse to pay £200-plus for a smartwatch, the TicWatch S2 claims to offer all the features you need for less… but does it pass Stuff’s wrist assessment?

[ Words Andrew Williams ]

£166 / stuff.tv/TicWatchS2 The appeal of Mobvoi’s TicWatch series really boils down to one thing: money. The TicWatch S2 has pretty much every feature you could ask for in a smartwatch that costs well under £200: GPS, a heart-rate sensor, better than average battery life and 5ATM water-resistance. But now that Fitbit and Huawei have used their own operating systems to show how good at tracking a fairly low-tech smartwatch can be (with the Ionic and Watch GT respectively), the S2 is a reminder that Wear OS can be hard to live with. And this is, let’s be honest, one of the least refined-looking Wear OS watches around. One of the most important parts of a watch, its design, doesn’t really enter the equation here: the S2 has a sensible, practical casing, but it won’t turn many heads. At least, not in a good way. Still, that price could still make it an ideal wearable for cash-tight fitness dabblers… couldn’t it?

1 Hard bargain The case is plastic; bezel, back and sides are all polycarbonate. It’s hardly flashy, and the pattern around the bezel seems a little cheesy, but you can’t argue with the pragmatism of plastic. It isn’t flimsy, and the bezel is built up to protect the screen glass.

GOOD MEH EVIL

That’s a compelling price…

2 Living dull There’s nothing exciting going on here. The bezel doesn’t turn, and there’s just one button on the side… and this hardware is paired with a screen that looks better on paper than in the flesh: it’s 400x400 and 1.39in across, but doesn’t look as crisp as some.

…especially for a watch with GPS

No NFC for wireless payments It’s not exactly stylish

Two-day battery life at best

5ATM means it’s swim-safe

T E S T E D M O B V O I T I C WAT C H S 2

3 The payin’ barrier NFC is an obvious omission: you can’t use a TicWatch S2 to buy things using Google Pay. But it does have water-resistance to 5ATM, meaning you can swim and shower wearing it. And the strap is removable using little release levers on the back. 4 Closer to the heart On the fitness side, this thing goes way beyond the basics. It has both a heart-rate sensor and GPS, the two vital features for any serious run-tracker, and Mobvoi also adds its own tracking apps alongside Google’s. They’re solid, as is the partnered phone app.

Tech specs Display 1.39in 400x400 AMOLED OS Wear OS Sensors Accelerometer, gyroscope, heart-rate, GPS Connectivity Bluetooth, Wi-Fi Water-resistance 5ATM Battery life Up to 2 days Dimensions 47x52x12.9mm

Or, for a few dollars more…

Mobvoi TicWatch C2 £180 / stuff.tv/TicWatchC2

5 I just died on your arm Claiming any Wear OS watch has good battery life is like telling someone the disease they’ve got “isn’t that bad”. But the 415mAh battery of the TicWatch S2 gives it better stamina than some. You can expect it to last one full day and then a fair chunk of the next. The TicWatch C2 fills a neat little gap between the cheaper E2 and S2 models and the fancier TicWatch Pro. The result is a simple, stylish wearable that has everything you’d expect from a smartwatch in 2019, including heart-rate monitoring and, unlike the S2, NFC payments. Its feature set certainly looks like good value for under £200, but there are drawbacks… like a battery that’s slightly smaller than the S2’s and only lasts a day with medium to heavy use. The design straddles the line between stylish tech accessory and

With its heart-rate sensor and GPS, this is one of the best-value Wear OS watches around. But there’s no denying it’s more of a pain to use than the Fitbit Ionic, Samsung Galaxy Watch or Huawei Watch GT… plus battery life, while OK for Wear OS, is dismal by any other standards. And it’s a style vacuum, which is not what you want in a watch. @wwwdotandrew

functional wristwatch. It has a stainless steel body and leather straps that feel premium. The 360x360 OLED display is a perfect size for swiping between screens, viewing stats and checking notifications, while an IP68 rating means it’s fine with a bit of rain… but not with swimming or showering. It’s not for true fitness freaks, but this is a decent watch that offers a good option for anyone after a simple, stylish wearable that won’t cost the earth. Stuff says +++,, Nowt special, but a smart and well-priced wearable

STUFF SAYS +++,, A great-value Wear OS watch… but something this high-maintenance needs to make you want to wear it more 63

TESTED ACER NITRO 5 (2019)

World of walletcraft A gaming laptop that pairs canny pricing with speedy AMD silicon: enough to make you think twice about spending over £1k? £749 / stuff.tv/AcerNitro5 Q The gaming world tends to be populated by expensive machines dominated by Nvidia hardware. But the 2019 version of the Acer Nitro 5 has AMD silicon inside, offering ample power for most games – including eSports titles.

Draggin’ quest The 128GB SATA SSD is faster than any hard disk, but it’s no match for the NVMe silicon used in other machines.

Q Despite its crimson hinge and red-accented keyboard and trackpad, this is not the most eye-catching laptop around. Nor is it the slimmest or lightest: it tips the scales at 2.7kg and is 27mm thick, which means you’ll notice its heft when you’re carrying it around. Q The 1080p IPS panel provides enough real estate, but it can render only 59% of the sRGB colour gamut – and that’s the smallest gamut that’s used on consumer laptops right now. This leaves the Nitro’s panel looking pallid and a little lifeless. The audio is nothing to shout about either. Q This laptop’s graphical grunt comes from an AMD Radeon RX 560X. It ran through Middle Earth: Shadow of Mordor at 47fps, but with Witcher 3 cranked up to its maximum settings, it averaged only 23fps – so you’ll have to tone the graphics down if you want smooth gameplay. Q The standard keyboard has scrabble-tile buttons, a red backlight and a numberpad. It’s quiet and comfortable but doesn’t have the speed and snap of pricier gaming laptops.

Tech specs Screen 15.6in 1920x1080 IPS CPU 2GHz AMD Ryzen 5 2500U RAM 8GB CPU AMD Radeon RX 560X Storage 128GB SSD Connectivity 4x USB, HDMI, audio jack, SD card, Ethernet Dimensions 390x266x27mm, 2.7kg

Q Throne of games

Q Hunger games

The AMD Ryzen 5 2500U processor is a capable bit of silicon. Its Geekbench results of 3564 (single-core) and 9864 (multi) are enough for this Acer to handle most tasks, from web browsing to photo editing.

This Acer’s battery lasted for about 90 minutes of gaming, and ran for around 3.5hrs in an application test. Just remember the mains adapter if you want a proper gaming session away from your usual plugged-in spot.

STUFF SAYS A solid and affordable option – but for mainstream gaming only +++,, You could get a ‘proper’ gaming laptop… but do you need one? Mike Jennings

The Nitro 5 is quick enough for any eSports title, even if you need to tone down some of the graphics settings. The screen is acceptable for gaming but its quality isn’t great, and the keyboard and trackpad are both a little too soft… plus the exterior could be slimmer and lighter. However, to solve all these problems you’d have to spend more than £1000 – and for many people they won’t be problems at all.

T E S T E D V O LV O X C 6 0 R - D E S I G N P R O

The Swede spot Volvo’s sporty SUV offers a perfect blend of slick performance and clever tech treats to keep you safe, cosy and (optionally) smug from £45,420 / stuff.tv/XC60Pro Q The days of Ian Beale racing around Albert Square in his Volvo estate are long gone. These days the Swedish car maker sponsors drama on Sky Atlantic… and being associated with True Detective gives you some idea of how cool the brand believes it has become. Q The XC60 sits in the middle of its SUV line-up, sandwiched between the award-winning XC40 and the mighty XC90. Models sporting the R-Design badge get ‘performance’ trim levels, a bit like M Sport on a BMW or S Line on an Audi. In short, things are far, far nicer on both the inside and the outside. Q Central to the Volvo experience is its Sensus infotainment system, and the first thing you’ll notice is they’ve put the 9in touchscreen in portrait mode – so everything operates like a smartphone, with cascading tabs for everything from the sat-nav to Spotify. Q Sweden is mostly bastard freezing, so the touchscreen works with gloves (and there’s a heated steering wheel). Sensus is remarkably intuitive with pinch, zoom and swipe functionality, plus voice controls and a swathe of apps including one that finds parking spaces for you.

Q A walk in the park

Q Conscious pilot

Four concealed cameras map out your environment right down to the road surface, weather and pedestrian movements, so you can park with a bird’s-eye view from the console screen. You’ll never park with mirrors again.

Volvo’s semi-autonomous Pilot Assist tech takes care of automatic parallel and 90° parking, and even steering duties at up to 80mph. This isn’t a licence for you to have a motorway nap, but it can make life a lot easier.

Q Android Auto and Apple CarPlay both come as standard. There’s a Harman Kardon speaker system, or a range-topping B&W setup that lets you tweak the sound stage, including a ‘concert hall’ setting for fast-lane Tchaikovsky binges.

Tech specs Display 9in touchscreen Connectivity Bluetooth, 3-pin plug socket, USB Engine 2L petrol or diesel Gearbox 8-speed auto with AWD

STUFF SAYS A smart and pacy SUV for those who like the finer things in life +++++ An in-car tech playground that also happens to be a joy to drive James Day

So good we cried when they asked for it back – the XC60 R-Design Pro is a hell of a lot of car for under £50,000. It’s up against plenty of stiff competition in the shape of the shouty BMW X3, Audi A5 and Jaguar F-Pace, but here you get understated cool, one of the smartest infotainment systems Stuff has ever seen, and enough grunt to compete with most hot hatches.

FI R TH ST ES AD E… D

MAVIC 2 PRO

ONE HPRC 3500 HARDSHELL BACKPACK This watertight hardshell backpack has been specially designed to house the Mavic 2 Pro, so it has snug foam inserts that cradle the ﬂight controller, propellers, additional batteries and much more. The only thing it’s missing is room for a laptop, but that won’t be a biggie for most pilots. £275 / heliguy.com

TWO POLARPRO FILTERS

THREE APPLE iPAD PRO

The high-quality Cinema Series glass in the popular PolarPro six-pack allows users to get creative with lower apertures thanks to a variety of ND stops, making it is easier to capture longer exposures during those tricky sunrise and sunset moments. Expect the water-repelling, scratch-resistant coatings to ensure longevity too. £150 / amazon.co.uk

iPad and Mavic make the perfect couple to take out on an aerial photography ﬁrst date. The latest iPad Pro handles 4K video with speed and ease thanks to USB-C connectivity, while the optional Apple Pencil 2 makes quick edits and image adjustments a joy when out in the ﬁeld. And it attaches magnetically, so it’s unlikely to go walkabout. from £769 / apple.com

NO TH W T IS RY …

TH TH EN ES GE E… T

INSTANT UPGRADES

DJI GO 4

1 GET HYPER

2 FOLLOW YOUR PATH

2 TRACK AND TRACE

Capturing that perfect shot with the Mavic 2 Pro couldn’t be easier – not only does the 1-inch CMOS sensor with on-board Hasselblad tech nab super-sharp images, but the Hyperlapse function shoots stable stills and processes them automatically to create dramatic moving sequences. Choose your subject, set a ﬂightpath, hit a button and enjoy the results.

A fancy new feature for the Mavic 2 Pro is the ability to save flightpaths, so you can capture the same scene multiple times while experimenting with different camera settings. Simply look for the Task Library icon in the DJI Go app – it sits in the Hyperlapse menu. From here, you can save a flightpath and watch your clever drone automatically (and quietly) buzz around the same route.

The updated ActiveTrack 2.0 system makes it really easy to lock onto a moving subject and snare the ensuing totally rad footage for posterity. Open the DJI Go app or use the controller to click the Intelligent Flight Modes function, then hit ActiveTrack mode. The new software will use the onboard optical sensors to create 3D maps of the area for smooth and seamless tracking.

The official partner app lets you adjust camera settings quickly and easily, edit films on the fly, livestream footage or share your creations with the wider world in just a few stabs of a digit.

ADOBE LIGHTROOM

[ Words Leon Poultney ]

One of the most powerful pieces of photographic software is a must-download for anyone wanting to make pro-grade adjustments to their still images.

4 KISS THE SKY

5 DON’T STICK AROUND

6 BE A SPORT

Once, drone pilots would have to spend hours perfecting their ﬂying skills to get truly cinematic results… but the new Quickshot Intelligent Flight Modes make it a doddle to capture stylish clips quickly. Rocket mode is our favourite: it sends the Mavic 2 Pro zooming up with the camera pointing down, allowing the subject to perfect their best ‘R&B star on a blustery cliﬀtop’ pose.

As simple as the idea sounds, the Mavic 2 Pro’s remote is the ﬁrst to have detachable control sticks, which can be unscrewed and stored inside the controller itself. It’s a little ﬁddly and there is a chance you could lose these important components, but it means the previously chunky remote can now – much like the Mavic 2 Pro itself – fold down to a minuscule and backpack-friendly footprint.

If the creative process of capturing mind-blowing footage gets a little too much to handle, why not toggle the switch on the right side of the remote and select Sport Mode? This disengages all obstacle-sensing and avoidance capabilities – plus it unlocks the 72km/h top speed. It’s like turning the traction control oﬀ in a sports car, just far less skiddy and potentially crashy.

AIRMAP FOR DRONES Get real-time feedback about airspace rules in your location, check the weather and plan your flightpath before setting out. It’s like having an air traffic controller in your pocket.

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GROUP TEST WIRELESS EARPHONES

3 OF THE BEST

Fully wireless buds Behold a triple whammy of AirPod alternatives with no strings attached for work, rest and play

TES WIN T NER BEST FOR EXERCISE

BEST FOR TRAVEL BEST FOR STYLE

[ Words James Day ]

Sony WF-1000X

Jabra Elite Active 65t

B&O Beoplay E8

What’s the story?

Sony’s fully wireless in-ears are built for business-class travellers: alongside phone calls and Google smart assistance, they feature noise-cancellation for a bit of peace and quiet. There’s an ambient sound mode for when you want to hear the drinks trolley approaching, and battery life of 9hrs with the help of the charging case.

An active lifestyle requires more than Lycra jogging pants and probiotic yoghurt drinks. You need to get moving, and Jabra’s lug-fillers aim to provide the musical motivation for up to 15 hours. Audio can be tweaked, your preferred voice assistant selected, steps tracked by the built-in accelerometer and sweat shrugged off with an IP56 rating.

The sort of earphones you want to be seen wearing, B&O’s aluminium and stainless steel E8s come in a selection of fetching finishes including a delicious dark blue. The fashion show continues when they’re tucked into their own leather charging case, offering up to 12hrs’ playtime, while touch controls add brainpower to match their looks.

Are they any good? The WF-1000Xs have a smart but unfussy look and a wonderfully comfy fit – a bit like Huw Edwards presenting the Ten O’Clock News. Pairing is quick and playback stable, with the engaging sound we’ve come to expect from Sony. In fact, with sonic performance to please most palates and digital noise-cancellation for blocking out the world, we’re in cable-free heaven.

Are they any good? If your runs are better described as ‘hungover plod’ than ‘Olympic qualifier’, these should sit nicely in your arsenal. Bluetooth 5.0 connectivity ensures stability of signal and sound quality; and while the auto-pause function upon removal from your ears can be a tad temperamental, it’s no more annoying than waking up to go to the gym at 7am.

Are they any good? The E8 touch controls make taking calls, selecting tunes and activating voice commands incredibly liberating as your phone stays in your pocket. The signature sound is refined and natural, and the accompanying app is a Mecca for toggling audio preferences – which includes a ‘transparency’ mode for letting just a little bit of the real world in.

Price £140 / stuff.tv/WF

Price £170 / stuff.tv/Jabra65t

Price £269 / stuff.tv/BeoplayE8

Stuff says +++++

Stuff says ++++,

Up there with the best truly wireless buds we’ve clapped ears on

Minor niggles don’t dampen the spirit of these great-sounding sports earphones

Smart Danish design using premium materials… and a user experience to match 69

T E S T E D A M A Z O N K I N D L E PA P E R W H I T E ( 4 T H G E N )

Cometh the shower You don’t need to splash out on a Kindle Oasis any more: the new Paperwhite brings waterproofing (and audiobooks) into the affordable mainstream

[ Words Matt Tate ]

from £120 / stuff.tv/Paperwhite For as long as we can remember, Amazon’s Kindle Paperwhite has been the e-reader we’d recommend to you, your mum and your remarkably intelligent budgie. Or to put it another way: if Goldilocks was massively into Philip Pullman novels, we reckon she’d have found the Paperwhite to be just right. Why? It’s markedly better than the very cheapest Kindle, but still great value for money if you’re a dedicated bookworm. And no one really needs the fancy extras offered by the much pricier Oasis, right? Well, that’s not entirely true. There are a couple of features that old Paperwhite owners might have been slightly envious of – namely waterproofing and Audible integration. Good news, then, because the latest Kindle Paperwhite adds both of these features while retaining a very acceptable £120 price tag. You can probably tell where this is going, but read on to find out if this new bath-friendly e-reader has got us in a lather.

1 No glaring errors The screen is 6 inches with 300ppi resolution – identical to the last model. It’s completely glare-free and as good a display as you’re ever going to need for reading books. And front-lighting enables you to keep reading away in the dark.

GOOD MEH EVIL

Woohoo, a waterproof Kindle for £120!

2 You’re in rubber duck You’re probably not going to be reading Peter Crouch’s new autobiography while snorkelling, but IPX8 waterproofing means you can now read it worry-free in the bath. Our review Paperwhite was splashed and submerged without any issues.

Bluetooth for Audible books is also welcome

Bit of a fingerprint magnet

Lovely, clear, bright pages

32GB storage is an extra £30 Still feels a bit sluggish at times

T E S T E D A M A Z O N K I N D L E PA P E R W H I T E ( 4 T H G E N )

Tech specs 4

Display 6in E Ink Connectivity Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, microUSB charging Storage 8/32GB Waterproofing IPX8 Battery life Up to 6 weeks Dimensions 167x116x8.2mm, 182g

The shape of waterproof Bath-friendliness aside, the new Paperwhite has gone through a few subtle design tweaks

4 Whatever you font The new home screen makes it easier to customise your reading options, such as font sizes and spacing. Useful features such as an inverted monochrome mode are buried in the settings, so it’s worth having a tap around to familiarise yourself. 3 Stop, look, listen Audible integration is a thing now, via Bluetooth support, so you can pair up some wireless cans and have Yuval Noah Harari do the reading for you. If you own both audio and text versions of the book, you can hop between them without losing your spot.

5 Famous last(ing) words Reading on a Kindle Paperwhite is glorious. E Ink is as good as the real stuff, and battery life remains immense. Your device should last a few weeks between charges unless you spend a lot of time listening to audiobooks and/or reading with the brightness up.

Q Shower screen

Q Rub-a-dub-dub

While the new Paperwhite sticks with the utilitarian aesthetic, there is one significant change. The inset screen has been swapped for one that’s flush with the body, giving this e-reader a sleeker, more unified look.

The fairly large bezel is a bit of a smudge magnet. While it’s not a major issue, we found ourselves wiping the front of the device more often than we’d like. The plastic back, though welcomely grippy, can also get mucky fast.

Q Scrubs up nicely

Q Hot tap

The 2018 Paperwhite is ever so slightly thinner and lighter than the last one. It’s not massively noticeable in the hand, but then the Paperwhite was already a wonderful thing to wield in one hand with a Twix in the other.

The only button you’ll find on the Paperwhite is the sleep/wake button, so the only way to flick through pages is by using the touchscreen. Next to the button there remains a microUSB port. We wish they’d make this USB-C.

The last Kindle Paperwhite felt like the perfect e-reader… until the Oasis started showing off. So this device takes nearly everything we loved about its predecessor and improves the design, all for a price that won’t offend your credit card. If the added waterproofing and Audible integration appeal to you, it’s a worthy upgrade. @MattWTate

STUFF SAYS +++++ This is the best overall Kindle when you take price into consideration, and now it can do the posh Oasis’s best tricks 71

[ Words James Day ]

MAKING MUSIC

MUSIC SOUNDS BETTER WITH YOU You no longer need to be a studio pro to make sweet sounds with tech, so isn’t it time you let those creative juices flow? All you need now is some instruments…

Synths

Strings

Keys

Beats

Want to make old-skool electro pop music like Depeche Mode and New Order, or challenging ambient soundscapes like Ariana Grande? Put yourself to (Kraft)werk with our pick of the coolest dinky DIY synths and vital add-ons.

Guitarists get to pick from Fender’s 10-in-1 Telecaster, Vox’s 11-in-1 amp, a Bluetooth six-string that fits in your backpack, and a bunch of axe-cessories including the secret of Ed Sheeran’s loopy success.

Pia pia piano time like the present to learn the keyboard and join a band. Check out the LED keys that light your way to brilliance, the touchpads favoured by Wu-Tang’s RZA, and the Akai mini marvel that can follow you everywhere.

Whether you want to drum like Animal from the Muppets or scratch like Mix Master Mike, Sphero’s smart rings make beats on any surface… and you’ll need bomber jacket at the ready for the return of Technics’ legendary decks.

MAKING MUSIC

Trigger’s boom A dedicated trackselectable trigger on the TR-08 can control external instruments, and there are 10 separate outputs for USB audio.

ROLAND TR-08 Modelled on Roland’s legendary TR-808 drum machine, the TR-08 is a beat maker from the brand’s boutique range and has all the classic electro and hip-hop kicks. The original 808 was even used by Marvin Gaye to programme the grooves to

Sexual Healing, y’know. The battery-powered 08 is more compact, but still manages to squeeze in a sequencer for snare fills and intricate hi-hats, plus a mini speaker for instant gratification on the move. £319 / roland.com 73

MAKING MUSIC

SYNTHS Easy to Handel The 400 has a carry handle, so you can take your synth out into the wild to create your own electronic orchestra and busk with the built-in speaker.

MAKING MUSIC

TEENAGE ENGINEERING MODULAR

NOW ADD THESE

ay attention at the back, it’s science lesson time. When something vibrates it makes the air wobble. Our ears capture these wobbles and our brain interprets them as sound. Synths copy this, but the vibrations come from electrical signals instead of emanating from traditional musical instruments (like a string being plucked, for example). Synths can manipulate signals to imitate most instruments or create otherworldly, spellbinding sounds. That means they can be as complex as a Kubrick movie… so building one is a great way to get accustomed to their inner workings. Enter Teenage Engineering, which has taken its bite-size Pocket Operator synthesizer range into the modular analogue universe with three new build-it-yourself kits. Essentially the Nintendo Labo of the synth world, these DIY instruments compromise on everything

except sound quality to keep prices down while still delivering top-notch audio. Each flatpack kit contains all the sheet-metal, connectors and modules needed to create your own personal synth, and can be built in around 15 minutes because it’s really just a case of folding the metal then bolting in the electronic bits. Top of the pile is the £469 banana-yellow 400 model. It has a 16-step sequencer and three oscillators, 16 modules, eight patch cables to connect everything, its very own built-in speaker, and yes, an instruction manual. The 170 (£329) is a monophonic analogue synth with a built-in keyboard, programmable sequencer, speaker box and battery pack, with nine modules and again eight patch cables. Finally, the baby of the group is the 16 keyboard (£139) with, yes indeedy, 16 keys that each have their own individual tuning option, plus a built-in programmable sequencer.

A LT E R N AT I V E LY

from £139 / teenageengineering.com

Stylophone Gen R-8

Denon AH-D5200

Maker of the stylus-operated Stylophone mini keyboards since the ’60s, Dubreq has just announced the Gen R-8, a UK-built touch analogue synth. £299 / dubreq.com

Be prepared for the possibility that no one else wants to hear your Krapwerk… and keep it to yourself with these stunning closed-back headphones. £379 / denon.co.uk

Haynes Electro Synth

AudioKit Synth One

Better known for its car manuals, Haynes also turns out other stuff – including this ‘build your own synth’ kit for those who don’t want to spend hundreds on one. £25 / gear4 music.com

The result of two years’ work by more than 100 volunteers, this free app offers up a hybrid analogue/FM synth with over 300 customisable presets. iOS / free

LITTLEBITS KORG SYNTH KIT Korg is considered by many to be master of the electronic music world, and here it’s partnered with coding kit king LittleBits to produce an award-winning modular synth for all ages and levels. The modules are magnetic so they snap together easily; and though there are just 12 to choose from, that apparently equates to a mind-boggling 500,000 different combinations of synth. We strongly advise you to download the superb

Unleash Your Inner Rock Star guide, also co-created with Korg and available free from the LittleBits website. But that’s not the only bit of genius at play here. LittleBits likes to encourage people to invent, so this synth kit can be transformed into a fully functioning keytar, for imagining you’re in Canadian electro-funk duo Chromeo, or a synth spin table so you can pretend you’re David Guetta. £129 / littlebits.com

MAKING MUSIC

FENDER A C O U S TA S O N I C TELECASTER

NOW ADD THESE

£1799 / fender.com

Vox VX15 GT

That Sheeran bloke started out using a Boss Loop Station to layer backing tracks to jam along with. The RC-1 is Boss’s entry-level looper with 12mins of stereo recording. £76 / boss.info

This 15-Watt combo amp was unwrapped at NAMM 2019, and gets Vox’s VET technology with a swathe of emulations to replicate the tones of vintage amps. £129 / voxamps.com

iRig Micro Amp

Fender Play

Here’s a pint-size amplifier for when you don’t fancy unleashing noise terror. It still belts out 15W through a 4in speaker, but also doubles as a versatile virtual amp via phone, iPad or Mac/PC. £160 / andertons.co.uk

It seems Fender’s app-based video tutorials are proving something of a revelation for anyone picking up a guitar for the first time. The short lessons also cover ukulele and bass. from £9.59 / iOS

he Edge from U2 takes 43 guitars on tour. This means that he can produce pretty much every sound imaginable from the musical instrument… and that he’s highly unlikely to fly Ryanair. If you’re a frustrated musician, odds are you aren’t so lucky. You might own electric and acoustic axes, but dreams of mastering a multitude of different types are stunted by a lack of space and spare cash, let alone a private jet. Don’t get mad, get even, with the Swiss Army knife of guitars. The American Acoustasonic Telecaster is a hybrid six-string that creates the sounds of several different types of acoustic and Fender electric. It’s made in California, and Stuff got the jump on the guitar’s unique functionality at a special unveiling in New York – where we discovered the hollow body hides some serious tech. A built-in ‘acoustic engine’ replicates 10 different tones,

A LT E R N AT I V E LY

Boss RC-1 Loop Station

JAMSTIK+ This is a Bluetooth-enabled digital guitar with real strings that teaches you to play as you go. The light-sensing fretboard detects finger placement and provides real-time feedback via its accompanying app. Once connected to your smartphone, tablet or computer, you have the power to wirelessly play, compose and produce music for around 10 hours via the rechargeable battery. And dreams of becoming a guitar

god don’t die because you live life on the road like David Brent, given this 16-inch instrument is entirely portable and fits into a backpack. It’s also a MIDI controller, so it can be used to trigger other synths. Pro players should look out for the all-new Jamstik 12, which offers greater functionality. The ‘12’ stands for the number of frets, which makes the instrument a little longer at 24.5 inches. $250 / jamstik.com

with the wonderfully named Mod Knob allowing you to blend between three pickup systems – two Fishman acoustic types and one Fender Noiseless – to create whole new sounds. The Stringed Instrument Resonance System (SIRS) uses a ‘waterfall’ port instead of a basic flat soundhole for better acoustic projection… although budding Wyld Stallyns may want an amp for added anti-socialism. That wizardry takes processing power, so the guitar uses a lithium-ion battery for 20 hours of playing time. Suitable for beginners or procrastinating pros, the Acoustasonic can still be played as a straight acoustic or even paired with pedals. If you’re taking it on your travels, the law states a guitar can be taken as carry-on luggage, albeit at the mercy of your airline – Stuff once saw Ed Sheeran have his instrument removed by cabin crew. Mind you, that might have been for the benefit of the other passengers.

STRINGS Sea-slick Steve The Acoustasonic’s five finishes include a fetching Seafoam Green. All variants come with a mahogany neck and ebony fingerboard.

Carry me home Don’t worry, you get a nice gigbag thrown in to keep your Fender safe. The FE1225 is made of tough polyester with a padded lining.

Pickup lines As well as a magnetic Fender pickup, there’s a Fishman under-saddle transducer and another Fishman sensor in the body.

MAKING MUSIC

KEYS Keybored Need to give your fingers a break? The One Lightâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s built-in speaker doubles as an entertainment centre for playing songs from your music apps.

Name that tune The available sheet music includes Tchaikovsky, Roberto Cacciapaglia, Vanessa Carlton, Whitney Houston and Sam Smith. Diverse, then.

MAKING MUSIC

THE ONE LIGHT KEYBOARD

NOW ADD THESE

n 1988 fantasy comedy Big there’s a classic scene where Tom Hanks plays Chopsticks with his feet on an oversize piano. The keys light up with each step, and frankly you’d have to be a cold-hearted bastard not to get wrapped up in the feelgood factor of it all. What we’re saying is that playing the piano is undeniably cool… and if the keys happen to light up, it’s Miller time. The One Light Keyboard uses coloured LEDs embedded in the keys, but they’re not just there for fun: they indicate which ones to play, leading your fingers through the tune and building muscle memory. Sounds like cheating, right? Right. But all the red and blue lights are doing is helping you to learn how to tinkle properly with each hand when a teacher isn’t around. This 61-key portable piano works with the accompanying One app to guide you through individual songs,

with more than 100 free video lessons and 4000 pieces of sheet music to master. You can pause, rewind or slow things down; and should everything get a tad monotonous, lessons can be broken up with a variety of challenging games. The One Light has 128 different instrument sounds, and if you’re feeling particularly smug after nailing Bohemian Rhapsody, a little silhouetto of a man can be shared on social media. Pleasingly, everything is compatible with both iOS and Android, with a flip-up rest for your phone or tablet. The pictured 61-key version is the entry-level baby of the bunch and comes with a built-in stand and speakers, although it can be paired with headphones or external monitors. Looking to flex your fingers on something bigger? Check out the wildly expensive ($780) 88-key Pro, or the weighted 88-key full-size piano ($1500) for emulating Elton John in the living room. Naff sunglasses not included.

A LT E R N AT I V E LY

from $280 / smartpiano.com

Akai LPK25

Apple iPad

This miniature MIDI USB keyboard gives you piano-style input and control over virtually any music creation software on a Mac or PC. A wireless version is also available. from £36 / akaipro.com

With new Apple slates touted for the spring we appreciate the temptation to wait, but you could try shopping around for attractive deals on the current gen. Just saying. £319 / apple.com

Ruark MR1

Chordana Play

Ruark’s compact active desktop speakers come with analogue and digital inputs to eke out extra sound from your tech without taking over the house, and they’ll stream wirelessly. £330 / ruarkaudio.com

Casio released its first electronic keyboard in 1980… and its first music app in 2013. Chordana Play includes 50 songs for beginner fingers to follow and can also be linked to a real keyboard. free / iOS, Android

ROLI SONGMAKER KIT The touch-responsive playing surfaces of Roli’s music tech have caught the attention of some pretty mega artists, including Wu-Tang’s RZA. Here Roli’s taken the sensible step of combining its three state-of-the-art instruments to create an all-conquering songmaker kit. Play melodies with the Seaboard Block, a clever keyless keyboard; play drums and control effects with the Lightpad Block M; and record loops easily with the

Loop Block. Everything’s right there for building any style of track, anywhere. If this sounds intimidating it shouldn’t, because you can jam along to interactive lessons to grow your skills with Melodics, an online educational platform that comes free for the first three months. Once you feel ready to move on to more complicated compositions, there’s a £400 suite of bundled software to keep things Roli-ing. £550 / roli.com

MAKING MUSIC

NOW ADD THESE

SPHERO SPECDRUMS Traktor Kontrol S2

Limited to just 1000 sets, Pioneer’s flagship DJ cans have been given a carbon fibre makeover to shed weight and improve vibration attenuation. £539 / pioneerdj.com

Native Instruments’ entry-level DJ controller comes bundled with its brilliant Traktor Pro 3 software and will work with a new iPad app in the spring. £239 / nativeinstruments.com

Volca Drum

Keezy Drummer

The third beatmaker in Korg’s Volca series is its most capable, multi-layered model yet. If coaxing out drum patterns with weird resonances sounds like a hoot, this one’s for you. £150 / korg.com

Minimal, colourful and responsive: tap on the circles to switch beats on and off in your preferred pattern and swipe to create different sounds on the simplest drumkit app around. free / iOS

from £73 / sphero.com he last time Stuff met with Sphero, we were told it would be moving away from licensed toys such as BB-8 and Lightning McQueen to return to its roots as an educational toy maker. You could tell there was something in the air that night, but at no stage did we foresee plans to turn everyone into Phil Collins. But against all odds, what you’re looking at is Specdrums, a kit that allows you to make a percussion instrument from just about anything, be it the included roll-up mat or any other object you can find. The twist is that it responds to colour, so reds will make one sound and greens another. It’s all programmed through a phone or tablet, and multiple rings can be worn by one or more person in order to create a band. That may take time, but then you can’t hurry love. The ring has a silicone skin and is sized to go around the tip

A LT E R N AT I V E LY

Pioneer HDJ-X10 C

TECHNICS SL-1200 MK7 Don’t call it a comeback – Technics has been here for years – but when the SL-1200 MK7 arrives this summer it’ll be the brand’s first DJ turntable in a decade. That’s right, time to dig out your headphones and alert Kurupt FM because this direct-drive deck looks just like the legendary original, but now includes features such as reverse playback, so uncovering subliminal devil-worshipping messages will be easier than

ever. The latest entry to the SL-1200 series also has a coreless motor designed to iron out any vibration kinks, and an aluminium tonearm promising minimum stylus jumping even in harsh conditions – such as Brentford housing estates. In fact, Technics says the MK7 will stand up to rough treatment in bars, clubs and house parties, and is including detachable power and phono cables. from £899 / technics.com

of the finger with a colour sensor facing downwards. From there you move to the multicolour mat or grab any objects from the real world: tap it on a white desk or a blue jumper, and it communicates that reading back to the Specdrums MIX app (iOS or Android) to play the resulting sound. You’ll get around two hours of battery life from the ring but you won’t be able to play with it in the bath or shower because it isn’t waterproof. When it arrives in April, the app will include 20 sound packs on various themes, including animal noises. You can also record your own sounds using your device’s mic and assign them to specific colours. Post-launch, Sphero expects to release a further app to teach kids how to make music. Until then, it hopes colour association will act as a bridge for them to understand music better and start making their own groovy kind of musical love.

MAKING MUSIC

BEATS

Power ballads Each Specdrum ring has a microUSB port for charging, and connects to your phone or tablet via Bluetooth for two hoursâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; play time.

Kick drum Specdrums appeared as a Kickstarter project in 2017 before joining the Sphero family. It reached more than 10 times its funding target.

T E S T E D H U AW E I M AT E 2 0 X

Growing pane With its colossal 7.2in screen, Huawei’s Mate 20 X is pretty much the ultimate phablet… but what are you sacrificing for all that extra display space?

[ Words Tom Morgan ]

£799 / stuff.tv/Mate20X There’s big, and then there’s Huawei Mate 20 X big. Here’s a phone that takes the brilliant Mate 20 Pro as a starting point and supersizes it, with a giant screen that makes every other handset out there look like a Tesco Clubcard. Huawei reckons this is just what gamers and multimedia addicts are after, but the optional digital stylus hints at plans to challenge the Samsung Galaxy Note9 as well. The screen really is the star of the show, and at 7.2in there’s no missing it. This panel is absolutely massive, and with ultra-slim bezels on all sides it makes quite an impression. And it’s an OLED, meaning impeccable contrast, deep, inky blacks and vibrant colours. So if you like huge displays, that’s the good news… the bad news is that a few specs have been stripped back compared to the mighty Mate 20 Pro. With that in mind, is it really worth expanding your horizons with this flagship phablet?

1 Big noise Extra goodies include stereo speakers, an IR blaster and even a headphone jack – something you won’t find on the Mate 20 Pro. On the other hand, you only get IP53 water-resistance here, which is nowhere near as good as any of the current champs. 2 Big shot The main camera has a massive 40MP sensor, while a second (20MP) offers wide-angle shots and a third (8MP) acts as a 3x optical zoom. They can capture impressive detail, while night mode merges multiple shots for amazing results in the gloom. 3 Big game This thing is blazingly fast, but is it truly a gaming specialist? PUBG Mobile does run better than on a Snapdragon phone, but that’s largely due to tweaks made with help from the developer. For non-optimised games, a Google Pixel 3 might have the edge.

4 Big data A whopping 128GB of on-board storage should accommodate all your apps, games, photos and Cliff Richard rarities, but if you want to add more you’re tied to Huawei’s Nano Memory format… which means paying twice the price of an equivalent microSD card. 5 Big time Huge phone = huge battery. The Mate 20 X has 5000mAh of juice to keep you going – a major step up from most flagships. We got through an entire day of talking, texting, social scrolling and video playback on half a charge. There’s no wireless charging, though.

GOOD MEH EVIL

Huge AMOLED screen looks fantastic

Superb camera is up there with the best

It’s all the performance you’ll ever need… Misses out on some top-end tech

Proprietary expandable storage is a pain

…but the size makes it impractical for many

T E S T E D H U AW E I M AT E 2 0 X

Tech specs Screen 7.2in 2244x1080 OLED Processor Kirin 980 RAM 6GB OS Android 9.0 Cameras 40MP + 20MP + 8MP rear, 24MP front Battery 5000mAh Storage 128GB (expandable via NM) Dimensions 175x86x8.2mm, 232g

Or, for a lot less…

Huawei P Smart 2019 £200 / stuff.tv/PSmart2019

The Huawei P Smart 2019 should only be a minor tweak of the 2018 version, but it manages to make last year’s model look thoroughly past it. This is a fine mid-price buy. The lower-end parts are enhanced with smart software, while its moody style and teardrop notch leave a much classier impression than the old P Smart. Specs-wise it’s a mix of hits and misses compared to the best of its rivals. Charging is nasty old microUSB, but it also has a headphone jack; the internal speaker isn’t much good, but the finger scanner on the back is

The Mate 20 X is a monster of a phone, and not just because of its size: Huawei’s latest Kirin CPU is stunningly quick, and the three-lens camera is one of the best you’ll find on a phone. But there’s no in-screen fingerprint scanning, no wireless charging, no curved glass… and not enough difference in price from the imperious Mate 20 Pro. @TomMorgan3

quick and reliable. You also get 64GB of storage, and a 6.21in screen. The Kirin 710 processor and 3400mAh battery place it squarely in the middle of the pack at this price, and the camera is solid enough. £200 is the smartphone sweet spot if you want high-end gloss without the high price. But while this is a good phone, rivals like the Xiaomi Mi 8 Lite and Honor 8X offer more of that gloss for only a little more cash. Stuff says ++++, A solid budget phone, but the competition at this price is incredibly strong

STUFF SAYS ++++, An absolutely gigantic screen and some winning features, but this is not as well-rounded a phone as Huawei’s real flagship 83

BETA YOURSELF

FEEDLY Increasingly baffled by the semi-random posts on your social networks, but want to ensure you never miss an important headline? Craig Grannell shows you how to edit the internet… Q View articles

THE BASICS

Whether or not you’ve subscribed to a publication, you can view an article by clicking/tapping it. Some sources offer ‘full feeds’, so you can read a stripped-back version of the entire article within Feedly. Others provide synopses. For those, tap ‘View Website’ on mobile to use Feedly’s built-in browser; on desktop, tap the article title to open it in a new tab.

Q Sign up Feedly is entirely free to use with up to a whopping 100 sources, and works across desktop (including browsers) and mobile. Download the app or head to feedly.com and sign up by clicking/tapping ‘Get started for free’. You can sign in using social accounts, but it’s probably best to use ‘Continue with Feedly’.

Q Find sources On desktop, type topics or website addresses into the search field. On mobile, this is found in the Discover tab (compass icon). For example, type stuff.tv then click/tap ‘Stuff’ to see everything we’ve recently published. You’ll initially get the 10 newest pieces, but Feedly will store up to 30 days of content per source.

Q Create a feed

Q Organise your sources

To subscribe to a publication, click/tap Follow. When you do this for the first time, you’ll be asked to create your first feed. You can use feeds to categorise subscriptions but it makes as much sense to just create a feed called ‘All’ and bung everything within that – you can easily browse by individual publication once you’ve set everything up.

On mobile, you can remove a source by selecting it, tapping ‘…’ and choosing ‘Unfollow’. But you’re better off using Feedly in a browser for major changes. Tap the cog next to ‘Feeds’ in the sidebar; the ‘Organize Sources’ screen will outline how many sources you’re following, those that are unreachable and inactive, and activity levels.

TIME TRAVEL Q Stay up to date

Bring on the night If you don’t fancy searing your retinas while reading at night, tap ‘Night Mode’ in Feedly’s sidebar on mobile. The entire UI will flip to dark, moody tones.

Head to ‘Today’ in the sidebar of the app to check out articles that have arrived during the past 24 hours. It’s like your daily paper, only without all those bothersome flippy pages and stuff you don’t care about.

Q View recent articles You’ve just read an article. It was amazing! But you forgot to save it, and now it’s gone from your feed. Oh no! Two options: in ‘Customize Feed’, briefly turn off ‘Unread Only’. Better: dip into ‘Recently Read’ in the sidebar, select your article, and save the blimmin’ thing this time.

OTHER OPTIONS

FLIPBOARD Originally a digital take on a paper mag, its pages flipping over smartly on iPad, Flipboard remains a magazine-ish approach to digital content. Add your own sources or let it feed up stories based on your interests, then leaf through virtual pages. £free / Android, iOS, flipboard.com

POCKET READ IT LATER Q Use boards

SORT IT OUT Q Change your view When browsing a feed, tap ‘…’ on mobile or the hamburger menu in a browser to access view options. You can then switch between text-only headlines, a magazine view (headlines and thumbnails) and cards (big images on mobile, a grid in the browser).

Q Adjust sort orders By default, your feeds are all listed in reverse chronological order, thereby showing latest posts first. Tap/click ‘…’ to view other options, including oldest posts first, placing the most popular at the top of your feed, or mixing things up.

Should you chance across a piece you want to stash for later, Feedly on mobile gives a couple of options: tap the bookmark icon to save it to your ‘Read later’ board, or the favourites button to set up a new custom board.

Q Share articles You can use your device’s sharing system to send an article. For example, you could share it via email or Twitter, or send it to Pocket for later offline reading (see right).

Q Integrate with Dropbox Sign up for Pro ($5/month) and, in the browser, click ‘Integrations’ in the sidebar to connect your account to Dropbox. Feedly will now automatically start backing up all your saved articles to Feedly Vault in the apps folder within your Dropbox account.

MARK UP

If your problem isn’t missing articles so much as queuing them up in tabs you never have time to read, get Pocket. Send articles to it from your browser, download them to the app, and then read stripped-back versions during your commute. £free / Android, iOS, getpocket.com

Q Mark as read… If you don’t see anything interesting in a feed and just want to nuke it, tap the tick button to mark everything as read. If you only want to keep the newer stuff in your feed, you can choose to mark items older than a day or a week as read.

Q …or unread The act of opening an item marks it as read. On mobile, if you want to change the article’s status back to unread, tap the ‘…’ menu and choose ‘Mark as unread’. It’ll then end up right back in your feed, as if you’d never opened it.

REEDER One of the advantages of Feedly is that, even if you’re not keen on the app, it can be used as an ‘engine’ for RSS clients. Reeder for Mac and iOS is one of the best – and free in its v3 incarnation, before v4 appears later this year. £free / iOS, macOS

TESTED WITHINGS PULSE HR

Keep on trackin’ What the Withings Pulse HR fitness band lacks in excitement, it makes up for in marathon battery life £120 / stuff.tv/PulseHR Q The Withings Pulse HR is the wearable equivalent of rolling up all your clothes into neat little piles, Marie Kondo style. It’s dull, but there are obvious benefits. This is a waterproof tracker with fairly accurate heart-rate monitoring, GPS (with the help of your phone), a sprinkling of smart notifications, sleep tracking… and a look so subtle that it’ll never catch anyone’s eye. Q Not taken yet? Neither were we – until we discovered that, while this tracker sounds about as exciting as Teresa May’s misspent youth, it does have one killer feature: it’ll last up to 20 days between charges. Q Click through the options using the one button or tap the front to navigate the usual screens. A long press opens the exercise options: you can have up to five activities, and these can be customised in the app (highlights include zumba and kite-surfing). Another long press starts the tracking, then yet another long press ends it.

Light sleeper At only 45g, you’ll forget you’re wearing it for the most part… which is just as well if you’re using it to track your sleep.

Q The monochrome OLED screen isn’t very sharp and only takes up about a third of the hardened plastic fascia, but at least the brightness adjusts automatically according to where you are. Q For swimming, 5ATM resistance means it’s content to go plenty deep, but it won’t track your strokes like some smartwatches… or identify sea creatures, which is something we’re still waiting for from wearable manufacturers.

Tech specs Display 16mm OLED Sensors Accelerometer, heart rate, light Connectivity Bluetooth Water-resistance 5ATM Battery life Up to 20 days Weight 45g

Q Keep on running

Q Keep on keeping on

The Withings Health Mate app (iOS and Android) has a useful and joyfully bright user interface. It’ll display graphs illustrating pace and elevation, not just routes, which can be handy for tracking your progress.

If you forgot to track a workout, you can fill in the blanks manually in the app so as not to sell yourself short when you review your activity at the end of the week. There’s also a load of advice to help improve your sleep score.

STUFF SAYS A casual tracker with serious stamina… but it isn’t half boring ++++, The only thing special about this is the battery life Natalya Paul

The Pulse HR is a no-frills, no-thrills health tracker. It’s very low-maintenance, the pricing is reassuringly middle-of-the-road, and the sleep tracking is on the money. All that, coupled with the impressive battery life, makes it a neat choice for casual gym-goers, step-o-meter obsessives, and pretty much anyone who has slightly more than a passing interest in fitness tracking and improving their lifestyle.

T E S T E D I N S TA 3 6 0 O N E X

Fling a ring of poses Thought GoPro’s Hero7 Black was smooth? This 360° cam claims to offer even slicker stabilisation… £399 / stuff.tv/OneX Q This is a very different beast to the king of action cams, the GoPro Hero7 Black – and that’s because it shoots in all directions. Its long, rounded-off pill shape allows the two camera modules to function properly while the One X is being handheld. Of course, it can also be stood on a desk or shelf. Or… Express drain You’ll get around an hour of video recording per battery charge; you can stock up on spares at about £17 a pop.

Q Screw on a selfie stick and the One X’s unique skills kick into gear: built into its software is the ability to magically remove the stick from videos and photos. You can even screw a special handle into the stick and twirl the One X around your head, creating a Matrix-esque ‘bullet time’ shot with the camera circling you. Q The iOS and Android companion app acts as both remote control and editing platform for the One X. You can hook up your phone or tablet via an included cable, or opt for the reliable high-speed Wi-Fi. Q You’ll need a pretty muscular device to run the app properly, and this is down to the huge size of the camera’s 5.7K video files. We experienced a few freeze-ups on an officially supported Apple iPhone 6 until we reduced the recording resolution to 4K.

Q It’s a wrap

Q It’s in the bag

The One X doesn’t have any water/dust protection as standard, so you’ll need to buy one of the waterproof cases (which start at around £50) if you fancy taking this thing for a dip. It’s not ruggedised either.

Whisper it, but the Apple Store’s £450 bundle is quite the bargain. It gets you the camera, a storage bag, the ‘bullet time’ handle and tripod, a selfie stick, a 32GB microSD card, two batteries and a variety of charging cables.

Q The combo of 360° capture and Insta360’s superb FlowState software-driven stabilisation tech creates smoothly flowing video, and that 5.7K resolution means it’s easy to crop in on the details later. Actual image quality is adequate rather than stellar, though.

Tech specs Video 5.7K @ 30fps, 4K @ 50fps Sensor 18MP Battery 1200mAh Connectivity Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, microUSB Storage microSD Dimensions 115x48x28mm, 115g

STUFF SAYS The One X is a great cam for ‘capture everything, crop later’ footage ++++, A simple way to harvest smooth video of your whole world Sam Kieldsen

The Insta360 One X has some impressive qualities, mainly in its wealth of shooting modes and its user-friendliness, plus its pocketable dimensions – here’s a camera you can take pretty much anywhere, as long as you bring a case. It also comes with a form of electronic image stabilisation that we’d put right up there with the GoPro Hero7 Black’s. That said, it’s quite expensive, and you’ll need to spend extra for its selfie stick.

TWO WEEKS WITH PALM’S MINI-ME SMARTPHONE

Cold comfort Palm It’s billed as a travelling stand-in for your ‘real’ smartphone, but priced like a proper mid-range handset… Tom Wiggins spends a fortnight yelling at the micro-phone £350 / stuff.tv/PalmPhone

The 3.3in screen is actually only 0.2in smaller than the one on the original iPhone.

DAY 01 Tech fans of a certain vintage might have fond memories of Palm. The company’s last phone was the ill-fated Pre, which was dropped way back in 2011. And while it ultimately failed, the Pre’s influence can be seen all over the smartphone world to this day. Wireless charging? The Pre did it first. The gesture-based navigation on the iPhone X and XS? Palm’s webOS introduced something very similar. Proper

multitasking with thumbnails? You guessed it. And now Palm is back with a tiny Android device that’s sold by Verizon in the US as a companion to your regular phone. It shares the same number, the idea being that you take the Palm out when you don’t want to be bothered by notifications. In the UK it’s a Vodafone exclusive, but one that’s sold just like any other handset: either

Most apps are designed for screens much bigger than this: it can only display one Facebook post at a time

free on contract from £31/month or on PAYG for a fairly hefty £350 up front. So it’s more likely to be bought as a main phone rather than an occasion-specific deputy, which changes the proposition almost entirely. This is certainly a very small handset. Its surface area is slightly longer but narrower than a credit card, with large bezels above and below the screen. It’s reminiscent of an old mp3 player, albeit with a much more premium feel, with Gorilla Glass front and back inside an aluminium frame. That makes the Palm a slippery little customer. Put it down on

anything that isn’t perfectly flat and it’ll make a break for freedom; or get too comfortable with it in your pocket and you won’t notice when it slides out. Given the Palm’s dimensions it should come as no surprise that there’s only one physical button on it: a wake-up button above the sim tray on the right-hand side. Below the screen there’s also a touch-sensitive panel that can be used to navigate the Palm’s menus (more on that later) and a USB-C port on the bottom. You get cameras front and back, but the overall feel is one of minimalism.

LO N G -T E R M T E S T

Donut of Truth™

02 03

01 Promises all the functions of a full-size Android phone in a titchy form factor 02 Feels reasonably well made: aluminium, Gorilla Glass, IP68 water-resistance

03 Android apps just don’t like this teeny display 04 The Snapdragon 435 CPU is easily overtaxed 05 Despite the small screen, battery life is really poor

Tech specs Screen 3.3in 1280x720 IPS LCD Processor Snapdragon 435 octa-core RAM 3GB OS Android 8.1 Cameras 12MP rear, 8MP front Battery 800mAh Storage 32GB Dimensions 97x51x7.4mm, 62.5g

DAY 02 It hasn’t taken me long to find something annoying about this phone: the lack of volume controls. To adjust how loud anything is you have to turn the screen on and pull down to reveal a slider. The 1280x720 screen is pretty sharp, although it’s only an LCD. The real problem is, most apps are designed for screens much bigger than 3.3in. It can only display one Facebook post at a time, for example.

DAY 04 Time to take some photos. The Palm has a 12MP camera with flash on the back and an 8MP one on the front. You can switch between HDR modes, add filters and even go fully manual, but with such a tiny screen you can’t tell if you’re pictures are any good. Upload some to check and you’ll soon realise you needn’t have wondered: they all look flat and lacking in detail.

DAY 08 The Palm runs Android 8.1, which is – here we go again – not meant for a screen this small. On-screen navigation is murder, so I’ve opted for panel presses instead. I’m just

about getting the hang of this and it’s… well, not bad. And, to be fair, the on-screen keyboard is not as much of a nightmare to use as you might expect. More importantly, this phone is underpowered. Even a simple game like 8-Ball Pool doesn’t run entirely smoothly – although the bigger issue there (predictably) is the screen size.

DAY 12 One thing that’s really tiny is the battery – 800mAh – and even when it’s idle the Palm seems to guzzle juice, dropping nearly 70% when left overnight. Palm’s solution is Life Mode, an extreme version of other phones’ Do Not Disturb function. But even with that on, the battery’s dropped by 50% over the course of this afternoon – and for most of that time the phone went untouched.

DAY 14 If the Palm’s only aim is to get you to use your phone less, it’s well and truly mission accomplished, but probably not for the reasons intended. Yes, it’s dinky, but there are plenty of budget handsets with Do Not Disturb modes – and when you do want to use them, they’ll do a far better job.

STUFF SAYS Unless you’re looking for a phone you won’t want to use, Palm this one off ++,,,

TESTED GAMES

PS4, Xbox One, PC / stuff.tv/ResidentEvil2

A zombie survival classic comes back from the dead – more atmospheric, more engaging and, above all, even more terrifying than it was before. Just don’t blame us for the nightmares… alling Resident Evil 2 a ‘remake’ really doesn’t do it justice. The term can suggest you’re playing a newer version of a game you already know, or a completely overhauled take that’s nearly unrecognisable. But RE2 is both of these things… and much more. Rebuilt from the ground up, it’s just as much a new game as RE7 was two years ago. In fact, it’s been crafted with the same engine that’s kept the Baker family in our nightmares since 2017… and

the first thing to strike you here won’t be the outstretched arm of a shuffling foe, but the game’s stunning visuals. It begins with a gore-soaked encounter, but you’ll be too busy watching the rain fall on Leon’s jacket to notice the beast gnawing on his neck. Once again Leon’s tasked with escaping the police station, but the game’s expert use of dynamic lighting and shadows makes it a much more terrifying affair this time. And while players now have full control of a third-person

camera, it’s pulled in close enough to make even the bravest horror fan feel claustrophobic. It’s easy to focus on the newly polished presentation, but this game also introduces more subtle tweaks – like how cleverly the combat knife and other weapons are integrated. Other changes include the ability to board up windows and craft ammo… but while these features add variety and depth, fans needn’t worry about becoming too powerful. Scarce

ammo and limited inventory slots ensure the odds are always in the infected’s favour. The main characters are more interesting and developed, while some secondary figures receive nicely expanded roles. Top to bottom, nothing feels like a mere upgrade on an old formula. Every bit as well made as the likes of God of War, RE2 will inform the future of the survival horror genre… and maybe of interactive entertainment as a whole. Matt Cabral

STUFF SAYS Much more than just a remake, RE2 is the series’ best entry yet +++++ 90

TESTED GAMES

Ooze your weapon

The story sticks close to the original narrative, but with plenty of new twists.

Raccoon City Police Station is a much darker place this time around.

As in previous entries, the serrated blade of the combat knife can deliver basic melee damage – but it can also be jabbed into a target that unexpectedly attacks. So if a zombie grabs you from behind, you can bury the blade in its chest to give yourself a bit of breathing room. A refined version of a feature introduced in 2002’s Resident Evil remake, the knife also degrades over time, occupies coveted inventory space, and can be retrieved and reused once the target’s dead. Other weapons have also been tweaked to offer fresh strategic options. Our favourite is the flash grenade, which can be shoved into an attacking mutant’s mouth before being detonated with a well-placed pistol shot. The sound of that explosion is especially visceral – and that’s true of the game as a whole, whose immersive audio work deserves particular credit for keeping our heart rates elevated. Whether it’s the whirr of a chopper about to meet its doomed fate, the distant bark of a virally infected Doberman, or just the slosh of a puddle beneath your feet, every sound contributes to the tension that’s constantly building throughout RE2.

TESTED GAMES

PS4, Xbox One / stuff.tv/KingdomHearts3

Kingdom Hearts III Part Disney, part Final Fantasy – and 10 years in the making – this is a cartoon-themed opus with fabulous fights and an abundance of heart fter a decade of waiting, Kingdom Hearts III is finally out in the wild – with a dazzling new set of Disney worlds, thrilling combat, and more story threads than you can shake an outsize key at. This is a smorgasbord of fantasy, emotion and magical storytelling… but could it possibly live up to the massive standards foisted upon it by fans? Yep – KH3 delivers much more than we could have asked for, and is the best game the series has produced yet. The story is, inevitably, confusing and convoluted; but the essence is that Sora must travel throughout various worlds with pals Donald and Goofy to corral the Guardians of Light to combat Xehanort. It can get really obtuse, but none of that matters. This is an enjoyable adventure even if you have no clue who anyone is or why you’re on this journey. If you have even a passing interest in Disney franchises or Final Fantasy, you have reason enough to play this game. Combat is frenetic and familiar, taking the real-time slayage of the

first two games and upgrading it considerably. Every battle is laced with power-ups and special abilities that make even the 100th slog through a group of enemies feel like the first time. Mechanics from previous instalments have returned as well, including the ability to run up and along walls, and swing around on poles for great-looking acrobatic combos. Kingdom Hearts III is a magical game that feels like a fitting end for the series – if this is, indeed, the end. Each of its core mechanics has been improved upon tremendously, and there’s so much to do in this 40-hour adventure that you’ll return time and time again to experience it. For veterans, it’s a heartwarming adventure that feels like a loving embrace from an old friend. For newcomers, it’s a sneak peek into a riveting world where Disney sentimentality meets Square Enix ingenuity, and where gamers of all stripes win. If you play one RPG in 2019, it should probably be this one. Brittany Vincent

All the Disney worlds, including Pixar’sToy Story, are picture-perfect.

Donald and Goofy have been vastly improved – and even hold their own in battle.

STUFF SAYS This fantastical trip is a worthy tribute to its Disney heritage +++++ 92

TESTED GAMES

PS4, Xbox One, PC / stuff.tv/AceCombat7

Ace Combat 7: Skies Unknown For those of us who still haven’t quite grown out of those Top Gun fantasies, the combat flight sim series is back… and back on form o you feel the need, the need for speed? So do we. It feels like we’ve been forever waiting in the hangar for the latest Ace Combat game to clear us for take-off. This is the first proper entry since 2011’s gimmicky Assault Horizon, which wasn’t quite the game we’d grown used to. Happily, it’s more in the spirit of 2007’s Ace Combat 6, and a barrel-rolling return to form. Crucially, the flying feels great. Whether you’re pulling high-G turns while trying to get a lock on an enemy MiG or strafing a convoy of fuel trucks, it’s tight, responsive and stupidly fun. And the ground is more realistic than before, even if some of the buildings are a bit boxy. It adds a real sense of speed when you’re flying low. The story is the usual nonsense: you play Trigger, a hot-shot pilot who’ll soon wind up in jail accused of murdering an ex-president and enlisted to Osea’s Spare Squadron to make amends. The context doesn’t matter much, and all you need to concern

Mission objectives can come through radio chatter, so be sure to pay attention.

After a short take-off you’ll sometimes be wondering where you left your stomach.

yourself with is shooting down or bombing anything that’s green in the target display. But there’s an entertaining yarn there for anyone who wants it. There are stealth objectives that task you with using cloud cover to sneak through enemy radar, a score attack where you need to cause a certain amount of destruction to unlock the next objective, escort missions, and the always reliable task of shooting down a specific enemy ace. One of the big new features is the variable weather. Dogfighting in electrical storms not only looks super-cool, but can also mess with your radar and targeting systems, making it much harder to track and target enemies. Way more exciting than any normal flight sim, and with some fine bonus VR missions, this is as close to flying a jet fighter as most of us will ever get. The story might be a little bit confusing in places, but it just about makes sense eventually, and comes to a satisfying if OTT conclusion. Ross ‘Iceman’ Presly

STUFF SAYS Grab your flight suit, Maverick: Ace Combat has never felt so good ++++, 93

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TOP TEN

This gadget has leapt straight outta testing and into our rankings.

NEW

OF EVERYTHING Time changes everything, including Stuff Top Ten placings.

HOT BUY BARGAIN BUY UPDATE Searing with techy genius, a product that’s set our hearts aﬂame.

A solid gold bargain. Worth owning, regardless of cashﬂow.

Smartphones 96 Tablets, mobile games 97 Headphones 98 Wearables 99 Laptops 100 Hi-fi 101 TVs 102 Soundbars, 103 smart speakers Home cinema, consoles 104

Games Tech toys, electric cars VR headsets & games Smart home Drones, compact cameras System cameras Budget buys How to buy… an instant camera

105 106 107 108 109 110 111 112

HOW TO USE THEM

TOP TENS SMARTPHONES

HOT BUY

Huawei Mate 20 Pro Huawei bumped its own magnificent P20 Pro off the top spot with another flagship phone that’s left Apple and Samsung scrabbling to catch up. The Mate 20 Pro brings back the triple-lens camera of the P20 Pro, only now it’s got a 20MP ultra-wide-angle camera with a new version of its predecessor’s AI-assisted night mode. It’s the most tech-packed phone in the world, yet battery life is a match for any of its rivals. No contest.

TIPS & TRICKS The phone itself doubles as a wireless charger, so you can share juice with any Qi-enabled device.

Stuff says +++++ A stunning smartphone that makes the competition look lazy in comparison

An AI-assisted video trick lets you create colour portraits with black and white backgrounds.

O NOW ADD THIS Huawei Smart View Flip Cover This case has a transparent window that will display your Mate 20 Pro’s notifications, time and weather. £16.95 / amazon.co.uk

The 3D Face Unlock security feature lets you wake up the Mate 20 Pro with just a glance.

4 BARGAIN BUY

6 BARGAIN BUY

OnePlus 6T

Apple iPhone XS

from £499 / stuff.tv/OnePlus6T

from £999 / stuff.tv/iPhoneXS

This is the gentlest of upgrades on the OnePlus 6. It gains an in-screen fingerprint sensor but loses the headphone jack; its selfie camera and screen are tweaked but the cost nudges up yet again. If only the legit top-end vibe will do, the 6T is still killer value.

This is the iPhone X with some new bits crammed in. But there’s enough going on here to make the XS a significantly better phone. Namely, it can take better pictures and there’s more power on tap. It’s fast, smart and full of fun features… and a better deal than the XS Max.

Stuff says +++++ The best way to avoid spending £800 or more on a phone

Stuff says +++++ Familiar on the outside, hiding treats on the inside: this is the X but better

Samsung Galaxy S9 +++++ £649 / stuff.tv/S9 Samsung’s flagship isn’t a huge upgrade on the Galaxy S8, but it’s still a very welcome one.

Honor 9 Lite +++++ from £140 / stuff.tv/Honor9Lite Cutting-edge design at a price that won’t shred your wallet: this is an excellent budget phone.

Moto G6 Plus +++++ £210 / stuff.tv/MotoG6Plus Superb both on paper and in use, the G6 Plus raises the bar when it comes to affordable phones.

Honor 8X +++++ £230 / stuff.tv/Honor8X A bigger, better screen, more power and serious camera upgrades make this a steal for the price.

Sony Xperia XZ3 +++++ from £549 / stuff.tv/XZ3 Sony’s best contender to date combines a fine display, a great camera and slick performance.

Samsung Galaxy Note9 ++++, £899 / stuff.tv/Note9 You’ll have to pay a premium for the S-Pen and extra screen, but this is a superb phone for creatives.

Google Pixel 3 XL ++++, from £869 / stuff.tv/Pixel3XL The latest Pixel isn’t a dramatic revolution, but it’s still one of the best Androids around.

FOR UP-TO-DATE NEWS AND REVIEWS OF ALL THE BEST NEW PHONES, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10/SMARTPHONES

O Prices quoted are for handset only unless otherwise stated

£899 / stuff.tv/Mate20Pro

TOP TENS TABLETS

MOBILE GAMES TOP TENS

HOT BUY

Apple iPad Pro

Data Wing

The latest iPad Pro isn’t cheap, but it’s a mobile powerhouse like no other, with a diverse and rich app ecosystem, tons of power, a gorgeous screen, and the kind of focus on creativity and productivity that just doesn’t exist on other tablets. If you just want to faff on Facebook or Netflix it’s massive overkill, but then there’s the standard iPad or a slew of other tablets for doing that. Still, even if you don’t actually need the new iPad Pro, you’re going to want one if you have it in your mitts for five minutes.

This game starts off as if Asteroids had a baby with a top-down racer: your triangular craft blasts around circuits, gaining speed when its bum scrapes neon track edges. Soon you discover you’re part of an OS ruled by a deranged AI. Story and game quickly expand, as you glimpse the world beyond the screen and battle gravity in cavern-based sections that recall 8-bit classic Thrust. Rarely do mobile titles pack in so many hours of clever, thoughtful narrative. Pretty much never are such games free.

Stuff says +++++ Once again Apple blasts ahead of the pack, with a stylish, powerful tablet full of creative potential

Stuff says +++++ A mobile game we’d happily recommend if it cost a fiver – for nowt, it’s an absurdly generous bargain

from £769 / stuff.tv/iPadPro2018

£free / Android, iOS

Microsoft Surface Go

Euclidean Skies

from £379 / stuff.tv/SurfaceGo Having this slinky Windows tab up your sleeve (not quite literally) is like carrying a mini PC on you at all times. The processor is adequate for everyday tasks and the 10in screen is lovely. Stuff says +++++ An affordable, ultra-portable workmate

£4.99 / iOS This is a challenging mobile game that pulls off quite the achievement in managing to create demanding and labyrinthine pathways from what are essentially single-screen puzzles. Stuff says +++++ A sequel packed with brilliant new ideas

Apple iPad

Oddmar

from £319 / stuff.tv/iPad2018 There might not be a whole lot different here compared to the previous iteration of the standard iPad, but subtle improvements and a relatively affordable price mean this is the best tablet for most people. Stuff says +++++ A versatile tablet for both work and play

£free (IAPs) / Android O £4.99 / iOS Oddmar looks like it could have breezed in from a PS4. Now available on Android as well as iOS, it’s packed full of superb level design and lush animated visuals, as a beardy Viking oaf sets out to save his tribe. Stuff says +++++ Touchscreen platformers can be great after all

Amazon Fire HD 8

The Room: Old Sins

+++++ from £80 / stuff.tv/FireHD8 For the price, you get a stonkingly capable tablet that doubles as an Echo Show.

+++++ £4.99 / Android, iOS Get sucked into an impossible dolls’ house for Myst-like exploration and tactile puzzling.

Huawei MediaPad M5 Pro 10.8

Super Cat Tales 2

++++, from £426 / stuff.tv/M5Pro This may not beat the iPad Pro, but it gets you similar skills for much less cash.

+++++ £free / Android, iOS A pawsome slice of touchscreen-optimised platforming magic with multiple moggies.

FOR FULL REVIEWS OF ALL THE PRODUCTS IN OUR TOP TEN LISTINGS, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10

TOP TENS IN-EARS

ON/OVER-EARS TOP TENS

98 HOT BUY

BARGAIN BUY

HOT BUY

Beyerdynamic Byron

Sony WH-1000XM3

A strong argument for the idea that you don’t really need to spend more than £50 on earphones, the Byrons have a sound we defy you not to like. They’re not like the company’s studio headphones, designed for sound engineers looking for extreme accuracy – they’re for everyday folk – but these humble-looking buds do come with a shot of that special Beyer sauce. They’re some of the truest-sounding in-ears we’ve heard, with great midrange detail and good punch to the bass.

Sony’s WH-1000 series was already a top performer, and the WH-1000XM3s make for an even more compelling package. With Bluetooth wireless and great noise-cancellation, they’re the ultimate public transport stress killer… well, aside from a chauffeur or a lottery win that lets you retire. The leather pads make them incredibly easy to wear, not unlike sitting in one of those ultra-comfy leather chairs, and most importantly of all the sound quality is fantastic.

Stuff says +++++ Seriously classy in-ear headphones with the detail to outdo the competition

Stuff says +++++ Great wireless headphones with effective ANC and a sound that nails just about everything

£34 / stuff.tv/Byron

UPDATE

4 5

Sony WF-1000X £140 / stuff.tv/SonyWF Impressive levels of detail and clarity, a decent amount of bass weight to the mix, and active noise-cancelling that works as well as you can expect for a pair of in-ears: we like these Sony buds a lot. Stuff says +++++ The best fully wireless in-ears we’ve heard

SoundMagic E11C £50 / stuff.tv/E11C Super-light and incredibly comfortable, the E11Cs have a slightly more premium look than their predecessors. See also the excellent new E11BTs, which add Bluetooth for an extra £20. Stuff says +++++ Capable, durable and afforable

Jabra Elite Sport +++++ from £168 / stuff.tv/EliteSport Superb-sounding wireless in-ears with some fitness-boosting features.

Bose SoundSport Pulse Wireless +++++ £200 / stuff.tv/SoundSportPulse Fine sound and heart-rate tracking make these worth the price if you can afford it.

£330 / stuff.tv/SonyXM3

4 5

Urbanista Seattle Wireless from £70 / stuff.tv/SeattleWireless The Seattles are some of the best-sounding affordable wireless cans around. They’re full and rich-sounding, with the sort of tasteful bass drive that will please the masses without turning off the chin-stroking crowd. Stuff says +++++ Bags of style and fantastic sound quality

AKG Y50BT from £90 / stuff.tv/Y50BT These wireless AKGs serve up truckloads of detail with a cleaner, more refined and agile listen than many Bluetooth cans. And the garish colour options of the old wired Y50s have been toned down, which is a bonus. Stuff says +++++ Great Bluetooth ’phones for well under £100

Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 +++++ from £150 / stuff.tv/Momentum2 Pricey but just about worth the outlay, the Momentum 2.0s will have you smitten.

Bose QuietComfort 35 +++++ £330 / stuff.tv/QC35 Frequent flyers and long-range commuters: these are the headphones for you.

TO READ THE FULL REVIEWS, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10/IN-EAR-HEADPHONES & STUFF.TV/TOP-10/HEADPHONES

TOP TENS SMARTWATCHES

FITNESS TRACKERS TOP TENS

HOT BUY

Apple Watch Series 4

Moov Now

The Apple Watch Series 4 has everything going for it – the larger screen, improved processor and louder speaker mean it’s easier to actually do stuff on it than any previous Watch, and it has a load of health features that just aren’t on other wearables. Whether you’re navigating somewhere using Maps, going for a run without your phone, or just wanting to keep track of your activity during the day, this Apple Watch does a great job of handling all these things and more.

Slow and steady wins the race, and the Now has gone on to prove that with a marathon-like pace helping it finally make it to the top of this list. We’ve long considered this tracker a bargain, but further reductions have helped it enter the realm of ‘downright steal’. OK, so it doesn’t have a screen or smartphone skills, but with guided voice coaching, a six-month battery and solid waterproofing, it has everything you’d ever want in your perfect fitness tracker.

Stuff says +++++ Best wearable ever: a sleek, sophisticated redesign of the previous generation with some hearty upgrades

Stuff says +++++ A bargain-tastic fitness band that does more than just track your steps

from £399 / stuff.tv/WatchS4

4 5

Samsung Galaxy Watch from £299 / stuff.tv/GalaxyWatch A sturdy and stylish smartwatch with plenty of power and a truly lovely user interface. Those with an iPhone are still likely to get a better experience and more functionality from an Apple Watch, though. Stuff says +++++ The best smartwatch for Android users

Garmin Vivoactive 3 £220 / stuff.tv/Vivoactive3 It looks good, isn’t a wrist-dominator, outlasts just about all normal smartwatches and gets you the same kind of tracking as the Fenix 5 at barely half the price. We just wish it had more smart features up its sleeve. Stuff says +++++ A fine smartwatch for sporty types

Garmin Fenix 5 +++++ from £450 / stuff.tv/Fenix5 Like the annoying kid in school who’s both super-smart and great at every sport.

Fitbit Versa ++++, £200 / stuff.tv/Versa Decent battery life and a smattering of smarts make this an attractive watch.

£57 / stuff.tv/MoovNow

4 5

Fitbit Alta HR £130 / stuff.tv/AltaHR The Alta HR is one of the most motivational health monitors around. The heart-rate tracking adds some insightful meat to your stats, and it has an uncanny ability to tune into the type of exercise you’re doing. Stuff says +++++ A fine all-rounder with great autopilot tracking

Withings Steel HR Sport £190 / stuff.tv/SteelHRSport Like Paul McCartney’s career, the Steel HR Sport can keep on going and going… and going. With a subtle, stylish design, it promises to last for 25 days on a single charge. This is one hybrid that won’t burn out even when you do. Stuff says ++++, One of the most well-rounded, stylish hybrids

Fitbit Charge 3 ++++, £130 / stuff.tv/Charge3 A capable tracker with an easy-to-wear design and long battery life.

Suunto 9 ++++, £435 / stuff.tv/Suunto9 Epic battery life and accurate tracking make this a great – if pricey – option.

FOR THE FULL REVIEWS, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10/SMARTWATCHES & STUFF.TV/TOP-10/FITNESS-TRACKERS

TOP TENS LAPTOPS TIPS & TRICKS

Who needs a Touch Bar? You can log into your Mac with your iPhone’s Touch ID using the MacID app.

100

The universal clipboard lets you copy text on your iPhone and paste it directly to your Mac.

HOT BUY

Apple MacBook Pro from £1249 (13in) / stuff.tv/MacBookPro

While the Touch Bar versions of the MacBook Pro have been treated to an internal shake-up, most notably with speedy 8th-gen Intel Core chips, the basic Pro is still running on last year’s specs. But with a Kaby Lake processor under the hood, this is still a monster of a machine. And when you factor in the gorgeous display, fantastic keyboard/touchpad and slick design, there’s no doubt this affordable option still deserves its place at the top of our list.

Stuff says +++++ Performance, portability and a sensible price make this the king of laptops O NOW ADD THIS Satechi Type-C USB 3 Hub Two ports not enough? This hub adds loads more and sits snugly against the MacBook Pro’s side. £31 / satechi.net

4 5 6 7

Microsoft Surface Laptop 2

Dell XPS 13 (2018)

from £980 / stuff.tv/SurfaceLaptop2

from £1199 / stuff.tv/XPS13

While there’s little that’s truly new about the Surface Laptop 2, that also means this computer has kept everything that made it such a phenomenal device in the first place. The additions of Intel’s latest processors and the full version of Windows 10 ensure it’s even better.

The Dell XPS 13 is one of the best, most consistent Windows laptops in the world. There are no gimmicks, no flimsy parts: every element is top-quality. You get style, portability, performance and great battery life. And every part of it just feels, well, good.

Stuff says +++++ An even stronger all-round workhorse than its predecessor

Stuff says +++++ Royalty among Windows laptops: everything about this is top-notch

BARGAIN BUY

9 10

Apple MacBook Air 13in +++++ from £1199 / stuff.tv/MacBookAir13 With a stunning design, screen and features, this is more than enough MacBook for most people.

Apple MacBook +++++ from £1249 / stuff.tv/MacBook A Kaby Lake processor keeps the standard MacBook competitively brilliant.

Huawei MateBook X Pro +++++ from £1400 / stuff.tv/MateBookXPro A stylish Windows laptop with some clever ideas to get the maximum display for your dollar.

Dell XPS 15 2-in-1 +++++ from £1749 / stuff.tv/XPS2in1 A powerful, portable and versatile hybrid, but with a hefty price tag to match.

Lenovo IdeaPad 320S ++++, from £300 / stuff.tv/IdeaPad320S Cheap and cheerful makes for a refreshing combination, especially if you’re on a budget.

Razer Blade 15 ++++, from £1480 / stuff.tv/Blade15 This ultra-portable is a super-powered gaming behemoth, but gets very hot under pressure.

Apple MacBook Pro 13in with Touch Bar ++++, from £1749 / stuff.tv/MacBook This 2018 revamp shakes up the laptop’s insides, giving it enough power to justify its Pro moniker.

FOR UP-TO-DATE NEWS AND FULL REVIEWS OF ALL THE BEST NEW LAPTOPS, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10/LAPTOPS

101

TIPS & TRICKS

With iPhones and Android devices, you can control your Sonos speakers from your lock screen.

Sonos speakers use a feature called Trueplay that tunes the sound to your room’s acoustics.

HI-FI TOP TENS

HOT BUY

Sonos multiroom system from £199 / stuff.tv/SonosOne If you want to pretend your favourite band is playing in your living room, there’s no better option than a Sonos wireless speaker. They look great, work with your smartphone and boom out your tunes with dazzling finesse – from the compact and Alexa-compatible One (£199) to the flagship Play:5 (£499) and the TV-friendly Beam (£399).

Stuff says +++++ Infinite music in every room without the need for custom installers? Sign us up! O NOW ADD THIS Spotify Premium Sick of playing your iTunes library on repeat? Sign up to Spotify for more new music than you could ever possibly listen to. £9.99/month / spotify.com

HOT BUY

4 5 6 7

Naim Mu-so

Riva S

£895 / stuff.tv/Mu-so

£129 / stuff.tv/RivaS

How much for a wireless speaker?! Well, yes, but what a wireless speaker it is. Naim has ploughed all of its high-end hi-fi experience into delivering a beautifully made, great-sounding device with AirPlay, Spotify Connect and aptX Bluetooth all on board.

With six drivers pumping out music with a tonal fidelity unrivalled by similarly priced speakers, this Riva is a must-have for sound nerds. Take into consideration the 13-hour battery life and a USB port on the back to charge other devices, and it’s also a great travel companion.

Stuff says +++++ A wireless speaker that can make a valid claim to be genuine hi-fi

Stuff says +++++ The top small wireless speaker for real sound-hounds

8 9 10

Naim Mu-so Qb +++++ £548 / stuff.tv/Mu-soQb Complements its big brother’s more refined character with a confident presentation.

KEF LSX +++++ £999 (pair) / stuff.tv/KEFLSX Convenience and fine sound at a real-world price, and in some vivid colours.

Loewe Klang M1 +++++ £169 / stuff.tv/KlangM1 Exceptional build quality and sound in a comprehensive compact speaker.

Jam Heavy Metal +++++ £60 / stuff.tv/JamHM Classy sound and design at a bargain price: this is the best affordable Bluetooth speaker.

UE Wonderboom +++++ £59 / stuff.tv/Wonderboom This little speaker might look cute, but it’s a sonic grenade – one you can deploy anywhere.

UE Megaboom 3 +++++ £170 / stuff.tv/Megaboom3 You’ll struggle to find a better, or more fun, portable Bluetooth speaker.

Marshall Stanmore II Voice +++++ £350 / stuff.tv/Stanmore2Voice A multi-use speaker with rock’n’roll looks, great sound, wireless convenience… and Alexa.

FOR UP-TO-DATE NEWS AND REVIEWS OF ALL THE BEST NEW HI-FI, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10/HI-FI-STREAMING

TOP TENS TVs TIPS & TRICKS

Pick one of the expert preset modes and you won’t have to do too much tweaking to get a fantastic picture.

102

First turn off any extra processing, then bring it back bit by bit to see if you like the changes.

Looking for some HDR10+ content? Warner Bros, Fox and Amazon are on board with the format.

HOT BUY

Panasonic FZ802B £1799 / stuff.tv/FZ802B

As 4K TV prices start to tumble, there’s been a mad dash from manufacturers to convince the world their OLED panels looks better than everyone else’s. So which one really does? This Panasonic, showcasing one of the best 4K HDR displays on the market for a pretty affordable price. OK, so the design looks plain and the lack of Dolby Vision might surprise a few, but when the picture looks so detailed and natural, who really gives a damn?

Stuff says +++++ You won’t find a better OLED for the money than this talented Panasonic O NOW ADD THIS Sky Q Once you’ve got a 4K TV, you’ll want access to the best 4K content. Sky Q is a good bet for watching and recording all your favourite shows and films. from £20 + £20/month / sky.com

HOT BUY

Samsung QE55Q8DN

+++++ from £1449 / stuff.tv/SamsungQ8D OLED still rules, but this QLED is a brilliantly accomplished TV and worth every penny.

Samsung QE65Q9FN +++++ £2419 / stuff.tv/QE65Q9FN This ultra-pricey 4K QLED is good enough to compete with the best OLEDs.

Philips 55POS9002 +++++ £1199 / stuff.tv/55POS9002 Available at a relatively affordable price for an OLED 4K HDR set, this Philips is an ace bargain.

LG 65 C8

Philips 55OLED+903

£1699 / stuff.tv/LGC8

from £1999 / stuff.tv/55OLED903

The current LG flagship television doesn’t appear to be a huge upgrade on 2017’s model, but some clever tweaks to the processor have turned this into one of the finest OLED screens you can get. Sure, the E8 has a more jaw-dropping design and more immersive audio, but the C8 offers the exact same picture quality at a less premium price. For this reason, it’s our top pick from LG’s impressive range.

This handsome device is capable of stunning video and audio – the latter thanks to the contribution of British hi-fi kings Bowers & Wilkins. You won’t confuse the sound this telly makes for that of a dedicated audio system, but it’s superior to any other TV you’ve heard – and by a considerable margin. The price keeps it off top spot, but if you have this sort of money to spend on a new TV, you have to see (and hear) this one.

Stuff says +++++ Small improvements make this LG’s best OLED television yet

Stuff says +++++ Philips enlists the hi-fi specialists to deliver a stylish TV with great sound

Sony KD-65XF9005 +++++ £1499 / stuff.tv/KD65XF9005 It may have a mid-range price, but this Sony’s 4K LCD panel is still a proper belter. BARGAIN BUY

Philips 55PUS6753 ++++, £549 / stuff.tv/55PUS6753 A bargain Ambilight TV that offers an awful lot of 4K HDR screen for the price.

LG OLED65E8PLA ++++, £2799 / stuff.tv/OLED65E8PLA Jaw-dropping picture quality with AI smarts and an elegant design… pity about the sound.

NEW

Cello C55SFS4K +++,, £500 / stuff.tv/C55SFS4K This UK-made TV is affordable, but its Android smarts and image quality are less than stellar.

FOR UP-TO-DATE NEWS AND FULL REVIEWS OF ALL THE BEST NEW TELEVISIONS, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10/TVs

TOP TENS SOUNDBARS

SMART SPEAKERS TOP TENS

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HOT BUY

Sonos Beam

Sonos One

Sonos’s home cinema gear has always been a little expensive, but with the Beam it’s created a great-value soundbar. It sounds ace, comes with loads of features and is compact enough to fit into the average living-room AV setup without taking over. If you want the best-sounding system then the Playbar or Playbase are still the products to go for, but they’re a lot more money, they don’t have Alexa, and they don’t control your TV in the same slick way the Beam does.

Making an amazing speaker was an easy job for the multiroom champs, but getting Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant to dance along in time with it… well, that wasn’t such a simple task. But the One is now an altogether more well-rounded device than it was at launch, supporting Spotify with voice control as well as Amazon Music and TuneIn Radio, while the early Alexa hiccups seem to have been fixed by a series of software updates. The only issue? It’s a little hard of hearing compared to Amazon’s Echo.

Stuff says +++++ Smaller and cheaper than the already excellent Playbar, and packed full of smarts

Stuff says +++++ Sonos’s Alexa-powered speaker remains a class apart from the competition

£199 / stuff.tv/SonosOne

£399 / stuff.tv/SonosBeam

4 5

Q Acoustics Media 4 £199 / stuff.tv/Media4 The justifiably multi-award-winning Media 4 combines subtle detail with precise surround effects to be one of the best-sounding and best-value soundbars you can buy. Stuff says +++++ A whole lot of under-telly hi-fi for the money

Sky Soundbox from £249 / stuff.tv/SkySoundbox If you already have a Sky Q subscription, you can get this fantastic audio booster on the cheap. If you haven’t, it’s really too expensive to be worth considering ahead of the class-leading Dali Kubik One. Stuff says +++++ The best-value upgrade ever… if you’ve got Sky

Dali Kubik One +++++ £699 / stuff.tv/KubikOne Gorgeous high-end performance for a not so gorgeous high-end price.

Philips Fidelio B5 ++++, £700 / stuff.tv/FidelioB5 A tech-packed soundbar that sounds as exciting as it looks.

UPDATE

4 5

Amazon Echo Dot £30 / stuff.tv/EchoDot The massive price difference means that, for many people, the 3rd-gen Dot is a better bet than the full-size Echo. The only downside is its poor-quality speaker, but the 3.5mm audio output will solve that problem for most. Stuff says +++++ One of the best bargains in tech right now

Google Home Max £399 / stuff.tv/HomeMax If you want a smart speaker that can blow the doors off a party, this is the best you can get right now. All the smarts of the basic Home speaker are here, naturally, and the larger drivers offer much more powerful bass. Stuff says ++++, A smart speaker that’s ready to party

Apple HomePod ++++, £319 / stuff.tv/HomePod For Apple Music users who want a high-end smart speaker, this is a cracking choice.

Amazon Echo (2nd gen) ++++, £80 / stuff.tv/AmazonEcho Nothing else in this price range looks quite as good or gets the job done quite as well.

FOR FULL REVIEWS OF ALL THE PRODUCTS IN OUR TOP TEN LISTINGS, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10

TOP TENS HOME CINEMA

HOT BUY

CONSOLES TOP TENS

104

UPDATE

HOT BUY

Sky Q

Sony PlayStation 4 Pro

Sky Q works flawlessly and could change the way you watch TV – especially now 4K’s arrived. With Sky Movies’ huge range of films and Sky Sports in stunning Ultra HD, along with the new addition of Netflix, there’s something for everyone to treat their eyes with. And 2TB of storage means you can record 350 hours’ worth of entertainment, so you’re unlikely to be sweating over which show needs deleting. Factor in its multiroom skills, and Sky Q is undoubtedly the best TV experience you can get.

As a gaming platform, PlayStation 4 is the best around – which makes the PS4 Pro the best of the best. Games optimised for the new console look stunning on a 4K HDR TV, and are substantially improved by the extra grunt inside this slightly bigger machine. Sure, it can’t match the Xbox One X for sheer power or resolution, but it makes up for that with an impressive line-up of games – including Uncharted 4, Horizon Zero Dawn and Bloodborne – and virtual reality support.

Stuff says +++++ You’ll have to cough up for a subscription, but this is the best box for watching both live and recorded shows

Stuff says +++++ The system for console gamers who have a 4K TV and want the best catalogue of games on offer

from £20 + £20/month / stuff.tv/SkyQ

BARGAIN BUY

4 5

Amazon Fire TV Stick 4K £50 / stuff.tv/FireStick4K Amazon’s latest streaming stick offers 4K plus a faster processor than its predecessor, and comes with the new Alexa Voice Remote. It is very Prime-centric, but the selection of third-party apps is excellent. Stuff says +++++ The best 4K streaming stick you can buy

Google Chromecast (3rd gen) £30 / stuff.tv/Chromecast The latest Chromecast is an incredibly neat little gadget that will let you watch almost all of your favourite streaming and catch-up services on a television that doesn’t have the apps built in. Stuff says +++++ The cheapest way to smarten up your TV

Roku Streaming Stick+ ++++, from £68 / stuff.tv/RokuPlus This simple all-rounder is a great choice for the open-minded telly watcher.

Apple TV 4K ++++, £179 / stuff.tv/AppleTV4K Streaming boxes might be on the way out, but Apple’s 4K version still has its uses.

£350 / stuff.tv/PS4Pro

4 5

Nintendo Switch £280 / stuff.tv/NintendoSwitch Nintendo’s console earned a promotion in our list after it impressed us with a growing list of fantastic games. Plus, no other device here offers the joy of portable gaming. Train journeys will never be boring again. Stuff says +++++ This 2-in-1 console is the real deal

Microsoft Xbox One X £450 / stuff.tv/XboxOneX There’s no doubt the Xbox One X is the most powerful console here, capable of producing stunning 4K visuals… but it simply doesn’t have the line-up of games to usurp the PS4 Pro from top spot. Stuff says +++++ A 4K monster held back by its game catalogue

Sony PlayStation 4 Slim +++++ £250 / stuff.tv/PS4Slim Haven’t got a 4K TV? This is the best way to enjoy PlayStation’s brilliant exclusives.

Microsoft Xbox One S +++++ from £250 / stuff.tv/XboxOneS No longer our Xbox of choice, but the One S remains a serious affordable option.

FOR FULL REVIEWS, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10/HOME-CINEMA & STUFF.TV/TOP-10/GAMES-MACHINES

105

GAMES

HOT BUY

Red Dead Redemption 2 from £47 / PS4, Xbox One

Believable characters, a world to lose yourself in, top-class voice acting and a story that intrigues all the way through. Warts and all, with improvements from other games ignored, this is Rockstar at its most arrogant but also its most powerful. Red Dead Redemption 2 trusts you to explore, to grow, and to let its world seep into your consciousness. This is a special game and one that was entirely worth the wait.

TIPS & TRICKS Make sure you talk to strangers more than once – you never know what they’ll reveal.

Stuff says +++++ Ultra-addictive gameplay in one of the greatest open worlds ever created

Regularly brushing and feeding Arthur’s horse will increase their bond. It’s what all good cowboys should do anyway.

O OR PLAY THIS Zelda: Breath of the Wild If you’re after a different kind of open-world experience that’s just as expansive and has a lot of heart, this is the one for you. £40 / Switch

4 5 6 7

God of War

Super Smash Bros. Ultimate

from £37 / PS4

£45 / Switch

A lot has changed for PlayStation’s god-slaying champion, Kratos. He’s acquired a beard and a new magic axe… but while the action is as breathtaking as ever, it’s the surprisingly mature storyline that’s the draw here, with Kratos learning the ropes of parenting.

It’s no exaggeration to say this is hands-down the best Smash game yet. There’s just so much going on, with a huge array of fighters – it’s a fantastic way to enter into the world of Smash, and long-time fans of the series will not be disappointed.

Stuff says +++++ The epic return of Kratos is yet another phenomenal PS4 offering

Stuff says +++++ Smash is well and truly back, and it’s bigger and better than ever before

8 9 10

Forza Horizon 4 +++++ from £34 / Xbox One, PC This is a bar-raising sandbox-racing game experience that’s worth buckling up for.

Monster Hunter: World +++++ from £21 / PS4, Xbox One, PC Fun for veterans and newcomers alike, World is one monster of a game.

Resident Evil 2 +++++ £50 / PS4, Xbox One, PC Highly polished and much more than just a remake, this is the series’ best entry yet.

Dragon Ball FighterZ +++++ from £46 / PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC Now available on the Switch, this Super Saiyan fighter is a blast to play and looks great too.

Marvel’s Spider-Man ++++, from £38 / PS4 One of the Marvel icon’s absolute best interactive adventures to date.

Assassin’s Creed Odyssey ++++, from £33 / PS4, Xbox One, PC Get ready to dive into one of the series’ biggest, best and most ambitious entries yet.

FIFA 19 ++++, from £37 / PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC Defensively suspect but full of moments that’ll get you out of your seat. Just like real football.

FOR UP-TO-DATE NEWS AND REVIEWS OF ALL THE BEST NEW GAMES, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10/GAMES

TOP TENS TECH TOYS

ELECTRIC CARS TOP TENS

106

HOT BUY

Lego Boost Creative Toolbox

Jaguar I-Pace

Building Lego models is already ridiculously good fun, so think what great a time you’ll have when the completed model turns into a functioning robot. With the accompanying tablet app, you can use simple coding to make the robot move, fire projectiles and play various games. And rather than retiring it to the dusty shelf once you’re bored, you can rebuild him into four other programmable models: a harmonica-playing cat, a driveable rover, a working robot-builder and a playable guitar.

Not content with simply making an electric vehicle that can get you from A to B with minimal fuss (and fuel bills), Jaguar has created something desirable, fun to drive and impressively capable when the going gets tough. This car offers Amazon Alexa intergration, smartphone connectivity and a 10in touchscreen on the upper deck. With the I-Pace, Jaguar can happily claim to be the first mainstream brand to really give Tesla something to worry about.

Stuff says +++++ All hail Vernie and friends – for value and sheer fun, it’s hard to beat this programmable Lego kit

Stuff says +++++ Fun, fast and practical, the I-Pace is the greatest thing to happen to electric cars in a long time

£150 / stuff.tv/LegoCreativeToolbox

Sphero BB-8 with Force Band £120 / stuff.tv/BB8 BB-8 was fun even without the Force Band. Now it will make you feel like a proper Jedi, letting you control it with gestures– and that’s worth more than all the snow on Hoth. See also the BB-9E model. Stuff says +++++ BB-8 is a bona fide Force sensation

Propel Star Wars X-Wing Battling Drone from £65 / stuff.tv/SWDrone The Star Wars Battling Drone works indoors and outdoors, and doesn’t require a licence or CAA permit to fly. It’s a total blast… just a shame there’s no camera or app. Stuff says +++++ Is the Force strong with this one? You betcha!

Sphero Bolt +++++ £150 / stuff.tv/SpheroBolt Even if coding isn’t your thing, there’s a lot to enjoy here for kids both big and small.

from £60,995 (with PiCG) / stuff.tv/ipace

Volvo XC90 T8 from £62,660 / stuff.tv/XC90T8 The latest XC90 is a monster 4x4 that features some of the most impressive interior tech seen on any car today, hybrid or not. It also looks great, rides beautifully and can tackle the twistiest routes. Stuff says +++++ A luxury SUV hybrid that happens to be green

BMW i8 Roadster from £126,935 / stuff.tv/i8Roadster It has a tiny engine borrowed from a Mini Cooper, but the added contribution of an electric motor driving the front wheels turns this stunningly futuristic convertible into a genuine supercar. Stuff says +++++ There’s no other convertible like this hybrid

Tesla Model X ++++, from £77,000 / stuff.tv/TeslaX An incredible, extravagant fully electric car that’s more practical than the Model S.

Anki Vector

VW Golf GTE

++++, £250 / stuff.tv/AnkiVector A little robot friend with sophisticated tech who will steal your heart.

++++, from £22,389 / stuff.tv/VWGolfGTE Volkswagen keeps the Golf’s heritage alive with a plug-in hybrid that’s a breeze to drive.

FOR UP-TO-DATE LISTINGS AND FULL REVIEWS OF ALL KINDS OF GADGETS, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10

TOP TENS VR HEADSETS

VR GAMES TOP TENS

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HOT BUY

Oculus Rift

Superhot VR

The Oculus Rift has been playing catch-up for a while; but now that it’s got the fantastic Touch Controllers, has boosted its room-tracking capabilities to match the Vive and has had a price drop to easily undercut HTC’s standard headset, it finally deserves to top our VR headset rankings. Its library of exclusive games has grown considerably since launch too, with the likes of Robo Recall, Lucky’s Tale and Lone Echo all added. This is now the best VR headset available that doesn’t cost the world.

Superhot has found its home in VR – just watch those slow-mo bullets skim the tip of your nose. The enemy will only move when you do, so time your attacks to perfection and dodge, duck and dive to survive. There’s something really cool about hiding behind a desk before blitzing your opponents with streams of bullets as if you were starring in your very own Matrix movie. And with Superhot soon arriving on PSVR, more players will be able to experience this wonderfully action-packed title.

Stuff says ++++, Thanks to the price cut and much-needed updates, the Rift is now the best reasonably-priced VR headset

Stuff says +++++ If you have a VR headset, this 2-in-1 puzzler and shooter should be right at the top of your shopping list

£349 / stuff.tv/OculusTouch

4 5

HTC Vive £499 / stuff.tv/HTCVive Barring a £100 price difference, there isn’t much difference between the HTC Vice and Oculus Rift in all honesty. But if you’re thinking of upgrading to the Vive Pro in the future, this is a great gateway headset. Stuff says ++++, A solid choice for immersive virtual reality

HTC Vive Pro £799 (headset only) / stuff.tv/HTCVive This high-end headset offers the best virtual reality experience by a long way, but its sky-high price means you should only really buy it if you’re a VR obsessive with a super-powerful gaming PC. Stuff says ++++, This hardcore headset is overkill for most

Google Daydream View ++++, £99 / stuff.tv/DaydreamView This budget-friendly option is the best way of bringing VR to the masses.

PlayStation VR +++,, from £239 / stuff.tv/PlayStationVR It can deliver incredible experiences, but the PSVR is held back by teething issues.

£20 / Oculus Rift, Vive, PSVR

4 5

Farpoint £16 (£55 with Aim Controller) / PSVR If it weren’t in VR, Farpoint would be a distinctly average space-based FPS. But the PSVR headset and Aim Controller lift it above the pack and make it a must-play, not just for VR fans but also for FPS addicts. Stuff says +++++ Simply a thrilling VR experience

Moss £25 / PSVR This platform puzzler has a storybook charm to it, as you guide an adorable little mouse through all sorts of obstacles. It’s one of the best titles to really utilise VR’s unique controls. Stuff says ++++, A one-of-a-kind fable that’s perfect for VR

Thumper ++++, £16 / Oculus Rift, Vive, PSVR This mesmerising rhythm game is best played in VR, despite the lack of tracking.

Doom VFR ++++, £20 / Vive, PSVR Movement can be awkward, but this shooter is still bloody good fun.

FOR FULL REVIEWS, AND TO EXPLORE MORE OF THE STUFF TOP TEN LISTS, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10

TOP TENS SMART HOME

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HOT BUY

Tado Smart Thermostat

from £200 + installation / stuff.tv/Tado It might not be as pretty as the Nest 3.0, but Tado has quietly evolved into the best all-round smart heating system around. Like autopilot for your boiler, it senses when you’re leaving home or coming back thanks to the app’s geolocation. And Tado’s gadgety goodness is second to none, with the option of zonal control for individual rooms and voice smarts from the likes Alexa and Google Assistant.

TIPS & TRICKS Check out the app’s Energy Savings Report to see how well you’re doing each month.

Stuff says +++++ Tado roasts the competition with its combination of simplicity and smarts

Crank up the nerdery by tinkering with Tado’s IFTTT channel or adding it to your HomeKit setup.

O NOW ADD THIS Tado Smart Radiator Thermostats Once you’ve tasted the joys of zonal smart heating, you and your wallet will never go back. £70 each / tado.com

Hook up an Amazon Echo or Google Home to change the temperature with your voice.

BARGAIN BUY

4 5 6 7

Netatmo Welcome

Nest 3.0

£152 / stuff.tv/NetatmoWelcome

£179 / stuff.tv/Nest3

Netatmo’s smart cam has face recognition capability, which works well once it’s got to know you, and the usual motion and noise detection is easy to control. You can also remotely monitor your house to keep the paranoia at bay while on holiday.

This is one of the cleverest (and best-looking) smart thermostats on the market. Nest learns your habits – when you’re in, when you’re likely to need a lot of hot water and so on – so it can control the boiler to save energy and keep that shower nice and toasty.

Stuff says +++++ A neat security cam with loads of features and storage options

Stuff says +++++ A simple and mess-free smart thermostat with Alexa compatibility

Philips Hue Starter Kit +++++ from £60 (white) / stuff.tv/PhilipsHue Become an indoor god with the smartest way of lighting up your home remotely.

Arlo Pro +++++ £230 / stuff.tv/ArloPro A good home cam that becomes a great one outdoors. Your shed has never been so secure.

Google Wifi +++++ £129 / stuff.tv/GoogleWifi A signal-spreading wonder that’ll make your old router look like a tech dinosaur.

Google Home Hub ++++, £139 / stuff.tv/HomeHub Google’s first screen-based smart helper works well and offers real value for money.

Nest Hello ++++, £229 / stuff.tv/NestHello Not only is this a nifty smart doorbell, but it also doubles as a useful outdoor security camera.

Hive Active Heating ++++, from £179 / stuff.tv/HiveActive This heating system is simple enough for anyone to use and powerful enough to be truly useful.

Nanoleaf Aurora + Rhythm ++++, from £180 / stuff.tv/NanoleafRhythm The most dazzling smart lights around, with some impressive sonic skills added.

FOR FULL REVIEWS OF THE BEST SMART HOME DEVICES, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10/SMART-HOME-DEVICES

TOP TENS DRONES

109

COMPACT CAMERAS TOP TENS

HOT BUY

DJI Mavic 2 Pro

Sony DSC-RX100 V

The Mavic 2 Pro keeps all the good bits of the old Mavic Pro while making genuine improvements in almost every area. Aimed at the enthusiast willing to spend a little more to fly and film a little further, it’s undeniably pricey – but we think said enthusiasts will find it’s worth every penny. It’s a fantastic flier that feels superbly responsive in the air. It’s not as small or affordable as the Mavic Air, but the battery life, safety features and Hasselblad image quality more than make up for it.

We wouldn’t recommend buying this camera if you already own the old IV model, but a few improvements have ensured Sony remains the top dog in our compacts list – and we’re keeping this model above the new RX100 VI simply because of the huge price difference. It remains one of the finest point-and-shoots we’ve ever seen, with a flexibility that few pocket cameras can muster. While it’s still not exactly cheap, we reckon this is the cam to buy if you want fantastic-looking snaps from your holidays.

Stuff says +++++ A drone with no real weaknessess, this is the new gold standard in portable flyers

Stuff says +++++ A small improvement over the RX100 IV, but this Sony is close to premium point-and-shoot perfection

£1349 / stuff.tv/Mavic2Pro

4 5

DJI Mavic Air £769 / stuff.tv/MavicAir By combining the best bits from the Spark and Mavic Pro, DJI has made a cracking gadget for both beginners who want stunning ariel travel videos and those who just want to fly a nimble drone at full pelt around the park. Stuff says +++++ The best non-professional drone you can buy

DJI Spark £449 / stuff.tv/DJISpark The Spark is the most user-friendly drone on this list. You control it via hand gestures or a smartphone, while it’s so diddy it will easily fit in your bag for a day out in the park. The 15-minute fly time is short, though. Stuff says +++++ The perfect drone for beginners

Parrot Anafi +++++ £549 / stuff.tv/Anafi The Anafi is a compact, (relatively) affordable and 4K-capable high-flyer.

Ryze Tello ++++, £99 / stuff.tv/Tello Not without its technical shortcomings, but there’s no better £100 toy drone.

£746 / stuff.tv/RX100V

4 5

Panasonic Lumix TZ200 £629 / stuff.tv/TZ200 This Panasonic compact is a significant upgrade from the TZ100, offering extra reach with the zoom lens, better colour reproduction, and an improved experience when using the electronic viewfinder. Stuff says +++++ Small, neat and not dramatically overpriced

Sony DSC-RX100 VI £1149 / stuff.tv/RX100VI A true all-rounder that shoots 24fps at full resolution and has stunningly fast autofocus, topped off with a whopping 8x zoom lens that’s quite spectacular for such a tiny camera. Stuff says +++++ A dinky yet luxurious point-and-shoot

Panasonic Lumix LX100 +++++ £529 / stuff.tv/LX100 One of the most capable compacts on the market, with superb stills and HD video.

Fujifilm X100F +++++ £1199 / stuff.tv/X100F The best street shooter around if you don’t need the flexibility of interchangeable lenses.

FOR FULL REVIEWS, AND TO EXPLORE MORE OF THE STUFF TOP TEN LISTS, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10

TOP TENS SYSTEM CAMERAS

110

HOT BUY

Fujifilm X-T3 £1349 / stuff.tv/FujifilmXT3

It’s really hard to find anything bad to say about the X-T3 – it’s just consistently great in so many ways. Fuji has looked at virtually every feature on the X-T2 and upgraded it. With substantial tweaks made to the pro-level video options, the high-res EVF, the super-fast autofocus and the burst shooting, what you’re left with is an all-round beast of a camera in a small, beautiful form. As APS-C shooters go, it’s the best there is.

TIPS & TRICKS Pre-shot ES mode starts taking photos and adding them to the buffer as soon as you half-press.

Stuff says +++++ An incredible stills shooter with video smarts to match

Sports Finder mode’s display enables you to see what’s about to come into frame for moving shots.

O NOW ADD THIS Manfrotto 190 Go! Carbon Fibre Tripod You no longer have an excuse for wobbly photos with this carbon-fibre tripod. It weighs just 1.65kg. £235 / manfrotto.co.uk

Tapping an area on the 3in touchscreen will let you set the focus point or take an instant shot.

HOT BUY

4 5 6

Sony A7 III

Fujifilm X-T20

£1849 / stuff.tv/SonyA7iii

£749 / stuff.tv/XT20

The A7 III manages to pack in a lot of technology and desirability for less than £2000. It’s a fantastic all-rounder that’s well suited to a bunch of shooting scenarios, coping well with landscapes, portraits, and even a little bit of high-speed sport shooting. As a camera design it’s admittedly not the prettiest thing we’ve ever seen, but it handles well for its compact size.

With its 24.3MP APS-C sensor, plus a touchscreen, the X-T20 will deliver results that are in some cases just as good as you’ll get from Fuji’s pricier models – and will leave you with a lot more spare cash in your account. With well-laid-out controls, a huge viewfinder, excellent AF and access to superb lenses, the X-T20 is just one more fantastic mirrorless camera from Fuji.

Stuff says +++++ A fantastic all-rounder that excels in low-light conditions

Stuff says +++++ The X-T20 nails the sweet spot between price and performance

7 NEW

9 10

Panasonic Lumix G9 +++++ £1149 / stuff.tv/LumixG9 The G9 is the best Lumix camera to date and a fine choice for wildlife or action photography.

Sony A6500 +++++ £1179 / stuff.tv/A6500 A cracking system cam for action photography, but stick with the A6300 if your budget is tight.

Fujifilm X-H1 +++++ £1549 / stuff.tv/XH1 By adding in-body image stabilisation, Fuji has created a wonderful all-rounder.

Canon EOS 80D +++++ £879 / stuff.tv/80D The 80D is so easy to use that even a toddler would get some great shots with it.

Nikon Z6 +++++ £2099 / stuff.tv/Z6 A top-notch and reasonably sized mirrorless camera from the optical experts.

Nikon D850 +++++ from £2999 / stuff.tv/D850 This super-cam has enough fantastic features to excel in pretty much any situation.

Fujifilm GFX 50S +++++ £4999 / stuff.tv/GFX50S It’s not cheap, but no camera we’ve tested takes better photos than this.

FOR FULL REVIEWS OF ALL THE BEST NEW CAMERAS, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10/SYSTEM-CAMERAS

111

BUDGET BUYS TOP TENS HOT BUY

SNES Classic Mini £80 / stuff.tv/ClassicMini

TIPS & TRICKS Why bother splashing out over £200 on a games console when you can get the SNES Classic Mini for a fraction of that? Especially when you get 21 classic titles pre-installed on this nostalgia-inducing machine, including the likes of Super Metroid, A Link to the Past, Super Mario World and the never-before-released Star Fox 2. And with two controllers bundled in the box, you’ll be able to start the Super Mario Kart action right away.

Chickens killed you in Zelda again? You can rewind up to five minutes and pretend it never happened. For full-fat nostalgia you can read the instruction manual for each of the SNES games online.

Stuff says +++++ With 21 classic games installed, gamers won’t find better value anywhere

Stop trying to raid Bowser’s castle in one sitting, and use one of the four save slots to take a break.

O NOW ADD THIS 8Bitdo Bluetooth Retro Receiver Fed up of those short cables? Use this clever device to connect most modern controllers wirelessly. £16.14 / 8bitdo.com

HOT BARGAIN BUY BUY HOT BUY

5 6 7

Raspberry Pi Zero W

UE Wonderboom

from £9.16 / stuff.tv/PiZeroW

£59 / stuff.tv/Wonderboom

It might be nearly twice the price of the original Pi Zero, but when you’re still getting change from a tenner the wireless Pi is fantastic value. Simplicity is key, with no need to mess about with dongles or hubs. This also means your Pi projects can be squeezed into smaller places.

If you’re after a cheap portable Bluetooth speaker, you can’t go wrong with either the Jam Heavy Metal or the UE Wonderboom. But the latter makes this list for its funky design and waterproofing. Stuff’s 2017 hi-fi gadget of the year, this remains a super bargain.

Stuff says +++++ The Pi Zero was already brilliant; wireless add-ons make it better

Stuff says +++++ Still one of our very favourite hi-fi gadgets, and for less than £100

HOT BUY

8 9

Moov Now +++++ £57 / stuff.tv/MoovNow The best budget tracker you can buy – gives most Fitbits a run for their money.

Beyerdynamic Byron +++++ £34 / stuff.tv/Byron The best-sounding earphones you’ll be able to find at this bargain price.

Moto G6 Play +++++ £129 / stuff.tv/G6Play A cracking smartphone we’d happily pay twice as much for.

Google Home Mini ++++, £29 / stuff.tv/HomeMini The friendliest and most knowledgeable miniature smart speaker around.

Ryze Tello ++++, £99 / stuff.tv/Tello Rule the skies without breaking the bank with this affordable toy drone.

Ikea Tradfri ++++, from £13 / stuff.tv/IkeaSmartLights Philips Hue might have colour-changing bulbs, but Ikea’s Tradfri smart lights are crazy cheap.

Mobvoi Ticwatch E ++++, £141 / stuff.tv/TicwatchE Fancy a watch that’s both smart and good at fitness tracking? This is our bargain ticker pick.

FOR FULL REVIEWS OF ALL THESE GADGETS, AND TO EXPLORE MORE TOP TEN LISTS, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10

TOP TENS HOW TO BUY

112

HOW TO BUY AN INSTANT CAMERA

Want the tangible gratification of having your photos in paper form? With Stuff to guide you, picking out an instant camera will be a snap… GEL FILTERS Forget Instagram cheats. With some instants you can add a coloured filter to the lens or flash.

JARGON BUSTER

MULTIPLE EXPOSURE Some models let you get all artistic by taking two photos on the same print. SELFIE MIRROR A mirror by the lens will help you make sure no one gets cropped out of your group selﬁes.

SAY CHEESE 1

Decent exposure

You can just point and shoot… or you can get a camera that lets you experiment with photography styles. Fujifilm’s Instax Square SQ6, for example, has three coloured flash filters for moody lighting effects, a range of different shooting modes including macro and landscape, automatic exposure with light/dark options, and a selfie mirror. O Get this: Instax Square SQ6 £125 / johnlewis.com

OR TRY ONE OF THESE…

PARTING SHOTS 2 Compose yourself The risk with instant photos is they don’t always turn out well. If you’d rather be sure you’re not about to waste film, go for a digital/instant hybrid like the Polaroid Snap Touch – it has a convenient screen so you can see how your picture will look before it’s printed. The only downside is you won’t be able to blame the camera for your abysmal photography skills. O Get this: Polaroid Snap Touch £137 / currys.co.uk

3 Prints charming Not quite ready to go fully analogue? One of the bonuses of the instant camera revival is that some models can double as portable printers for all of your best phone selfies and cat portraits. If you want to be able to produce retro-style prints of your smartphone snaps, make sure you go for a camera that has Bluetooth connectivity, such as the Kodak Mini Shot. O Get this: Kodak Mini Shot £87 / currys.co.uk

4 Paper money While there are plenty of affordable instant snappers, don’t forget to factor in the cost of film per print – some formats are a lot more expensive than others. Polaroid Originals 600 is the priciest on the market at £17.99 for eight photos, which works out at £2.25 per picture. Fujifilm Instax Mini and Kodak Mini are both £14.99 for a pack of 20 (75p each), and Polaroid Zink Paper is £9.99 for 20 (50p).

5 Lens with beneﬁts Need more options? Lomography’s Diana Instant Square allows manual control and is available with a range of different lenses, from telephoto to super-wide-angle. O Get this: Diana Instant Square from £89 / shop.lomography.com

O POLAROID ORIGINALS ONESTEP 2

O LOMO’INSTANT AUTOMAT

£109 / jessops.com A cute instant camera reborn from Polaroid’s iconic 1977 original – but with added modern features.

£169 / shop.lomography.com The Automat takes ace shots right out of the box, but its extra lenses and accessories make it flexible fun.

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NEXT BIG THING?

hat’s wrong with a four-wheel-drive? Apart from the fact that they seem to be used mostly by people who do nothing more extreme than the school run, nothing. But in the not-too-distant future, when the Great Battle of the Millennials has left the streets littered with burnt-out avocado trucks, or the oceans have risen and all that’s left is the tops of mountains peeking above the surface, that Chelsea tractor is going to be about as much use as working indicators on an Audi. Where we’re going, we don’t need wheels – we need Hyundai’s Elevate.

Why’s it got wheels, then? Because the kids will still need dropping off at school. You really expect them to walk, with all those rogue Instagram influencers wandering the streets? This electric Ultimate Mobility Vehicle (UMV for short) can cruise like any other car if the roads are flat and clear; but if the surface is uneven, or you come across a five-foot gap or obstacle, it can stand up and step over them. The Elevate’s fully articulated robotic legs make it capable of both mammalian and reptilian gaits, reducing the chances of getting wedged in anywhere.

Isn’t this all a bit far-fetched? Perhaps – it is only a concept, so there’s still time for the whole thing to die on its chassis. But even if it never goes mainstream, a UMV could be hugely useful at the scenes of natural disasters where access using traditional vehicles is impossible. And there are obvious benefits for people who find it difficult to get in and out of buildings with steps. The UMV’s legs can easily lift it to doorways above street level – and it’s designed to be autonomous, so it can be summoned when needed like a giant metal dog.

[ Words Tom Wiggins ]

cars with legs

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