11 minute read
Review of Huawei Freelace Pro
4/5
Huawei Freelace Pro
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AED 399
Huawei’s new Freelace Pro neckband-style wireless earbuds were launched a couple of weeks ago. The company was kind enough to send us a review unit and boy, we were surprised by the sheer quality and value it brings along.
The Huawei FreeLace Pro is a premium wireless earbuds that come with active noise cancellation, an IP55 rating, 24 hours of battery life, and promises of awesome sound quality. While the earbuds are available in three colours such as white, black and green – Huawei calls them Obsidian Black, Dawn White, and Spruce Green. We received the green variant for this review.
Upon opening up the box, the first thing you see is the pair of wireless neckband-style earbuds. Digging deeper, you also get two pairs of ear tips, the warranty card, quick start guide, and safety info. The overall build quality of the earbuds is very good – clad in a mix of plastic, metal, and rubber, the neckband is detachable, which reveals a USB-C connector.
Now, this can be connected to a USB-C charger or to a smartphone directly that supports reverse charging, such as the Huawei Mate 40 Pro. The earbuds weigh just 34-gms and are a pleasure to wear. The earbuds fit snuggly into your ears and they don’t protrude too much from the ear. In addition, the wingtips on the earbuds make sure they sit in place securely in your ear and do not move around, when you are out on a run, or during a workout session.
Towards the right earbud is where you get the controls (volume up, volume down, play/pause) and the power button. In addition, you can touch the exterior of the left earbud to perform some functions. For instance, touching and holding it cycles between Huawei’s proprietary active noise cancelation modes: ANC on, Awareness, and ANC off.
Connecting the earbuds to a smartphone is a walk in the park – switch on Bluetooth pairing on your smartphone, select the Freelace Pro from the list and that’s it. And if you happen to own one of Huawei’s recent smartphones, the procedure is even simpler. Detach the neckband to reveal the USB-C connector and insert it into the USB-C port of the Huawei smartphone to charge it or instantly pair it with the smartphone.
Audio quality is very good since Huawei packs in a pair of 14.2mm dynamic drivers inside the earbuds. I was able to hear tones on the entire spectrum – from rich lows to punchy mids and crystal clear highs. It does not matter what type or genre of music you play or prefer. You will be able to enjoy your music at the highest quality, as it was meant to be.
Another plus with the Huawei Freelace Pro is its ability to reduce audio latency for gaming, all the way down to 150 ms. This is done through wireless audio codec optimization. The low-latency gaming mode is automatically enabled when you start a game, thus keeping you alert and sharp for every round. You also get two microphones for Active Noise Cancellation and in-call noise cancellation, which is handled by a triple-mic system.
The three things that clearly make the Huawei Freelace Pro a winner are comfort, noise cancellation, and audio quality – they are all exceptional, especially when you consider the pocket-friendly price it is available at – AED 399. If you are on the market, looking for an excellent pair of wireless earbuds that offer tons of value and brilliant audio and build quality, the Huawei Freelace Pro should be on your list.
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4/5
Misa Social Robot
Misa Social Robot is a next-generation smart robot that is targeted at families and kids. Misa responds to ‘Hey Misa’ and can do a lot of things such as play/teach children, handle daily schedules and tasks, offer home automation and surveillance, and even support elderly care. And it comes programmed in ten languages such as French, English, Dutch, German, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Mandarin, Japanese and Korean.
Upon opening the box, you get the Misa robot, which is available in two colour options – pink and blue. The one we received for this review was pink in colour. You also get some paperwork including the command list, the quick start guide, and the charger along with the power adapter, which includes four USB ports. You also get two microphones for karaoke sessions – one in pink and one in blue colour.
The Misa Social Robot comes with a 7-inch screen on the front, that offers a resolution of 1280-by-700 pixels. It is powered by a Quad-Core 1.8GHz processor, comes with 2GB of RAM and 16GB of storage space. The robot is powered by the Android 9.0 operating system, and it comes packed with an HD Camera and an AR Camera. It also comes with a dual microphone, and a bunch of sensors such as a touch sensor, drop sensor, range sensor, and an ultrasonic sensor to avoid obstacles. The battery is rated at 10000mAh, which offers a standby time of 48 hours and a talk time of 8 hours on a single charge. It weighs around 1.19-kgs and is compatible with both Android and iOS devices. Once you switch on Misa, you go through an intuitive setup procedure. Connect it to your WiFi network, scan the QR code to download the Misa Connect App, then connect the app to the Misa robot. To do that, scan the QR code on Misa’s screen and the app will immediately connect to it. Next, name your Misa robot and you will be good to go.
In order to ask Misa a question, all you need to do is say, “Hey Misa,” followed by a question, and Misa will get to work on an answer. Since Misa is connected to the internet, the variety of questions you can ask is endless. Especially if you have very inquisitive kids like mine, who ask a thousand questions a day, simply direct them to Misa to handle those questions!
In addition, since Misa comes with four wheels and a bunch of sensors all around it, it can move around the house with ease. Simply say “Hey Misa, Come Here!” and Misa will come rolling towards you. You can even move Misa throughout your house to monitor your kids and pets.
At first glance, the Misa Social Robot might look like another overpriced toy. But just a toy, it is not! It is a robot that packs
AED 999
in features such as home automation, security, social interactions with the expression of emotions, and it can also act as an assistance robot for seniors and family. It features Child Monitoring through the app, edutainment, multimedia playback, can work as a personal assistant, and more. It can do chores like book a hotel, display a recipe, play music, show real-time stock prices, and lots more, through voice commands.
For a price of AED 999, you get a robot that offers all of the above-mentioned features, in addition to coming packed with thousands of hours of safe and ad-free games, books, learning apps, and videos all from top family brands such as Little Miss, The Moomins, Mr. Bean, Peter Rabbit, Mr. Men, and so on. You can even remotely monitor your home and control Misa to move around remotely using the app.
Misa also lets you make video calls, set alarms, teach good habits, tell stories, play music, play videos, indulge in karaoke sessions, and lots more. Furthermore, you can also create a personalised display message on its screen to surprise your family members and friends – possibly a Birthday message on their birthdays or a personalised message on their anniversaries. Considering all of that, Misa comes across as a truly worthwhile investment.
3/5
AED 19290
Double Robotics Double 3
The age of the robots is here – and we mean for the better. A wide range of companies have started investing in robotics and telepresence, and one of the companies to commercially launch such robots onto the market is Double Robotics. The company sent us the Double 3 for a test drive a week ago and boy, did we have fun!
The Double 3 is, as the company describes, a self-driving, two-wheeled videoconferencing robot that has been designed to make remote work effortless. The robot is aimed at telecommuters, doctors, remote workers, and students to give them a feeling of “physical presence” where they can’t be in person.
The Double 3 has been upgraded with the latest tech that’s available on the market today. Unlike its predecessors, the Double 3 does not use just an iPad for an interface. Instead, it uses a fully-integrated solution that packs in the latest Nvidia Jetson TX2 GPU tech, two Intel RealSense depth sensors, two high-resolution cameras rated at 13MP, and a beam-forming microphone array that consists of 6 microphones.
Since the Double 3 flaunts new hardware, you now get a new click-to-drive interface, obstacle avoidance, and pan/tilt/zoom video functions, to provide a fully-immersive remote experience to seasoned users as well as complete beginners. Starting off with the Double 3 is a walk in the park.
Once out of the box, connect the head to the body that consists of a rod attached to a pair of wheels. The head runs Ubuntu Linux 18.04 LTS as the operating system of choice. Switch the Double 3 on, and it will walk you through the setup procedure, which hardly takes minutes to complete.
Once completed, you get a digital pair of eyes on the screen, indicating the Double 3 is ready to use. The Double 3 comes with an array of 3D sensors, which lets it map the floor and its surroundings, thus allowing it to divert around obstacles to reach its destination.
In order to test the Double 3 out, we installed and set it up, which hardly took minutes. Once done, we were able to drive it around, even over difficult terrain such as doorways. The robot was even able to balance itself over tough terrain inside our office such as a door threshold and cross it with ease. We also tried logging into a video call through an Android smartphone. The call quality and the video quality were very good, considering the Double 3 has two 13MP cameras and 6 microphones. On a single charge, the Double 3 worked nonstop for about 4 hours, before it needed to recharge from its charging dock.
The Double 3 can move autonomously and offer a new mixed-reality driver’s interface. By doing this, Double Robotics enables users to drive their own Double 3 to roam around the office, visit patients, attend meetings, monitor work sites, or go to class from anywhere in the world.
The Double 3 with a charging dock is priced at AED 19,290 which includes the VAT. Installation and setup are free in the UAE. It is worth noting that if you invested in a Double 2 robot, you can just stick a Double 3 head on a Double 2 body and it instantly becomes a Double 3.
However, if you are on the market for a telepresence robot that is easy to install, setup, and use, offers a good set of features, you can’t go wrong with the Double Robotics Double 3.
READ REVIEW ONLINE
3/5
AED 119
RAM can make a huge difference in the performance of your PC or laptop, irrespective of whether you are a content developer, coder, gamer, or just another office employee.
The more RAM your system has, the less likely you would be pulling your hair off in despair.
Kingston Technology is known for quality memory products around the world including memory cards, SSDs, USB drives, and lots more.
The company also offers an affordable lineup of RAM products under its ValueRAM series. And today, we are putting the KVR26S19S6/8 DDR4 2666Mhz SODIMM to test!
The ValueRAM KVR26S19S6/8 is a DDR4 SO-DIMM memory module for laptops and the package comes with one 8GB module inside it.
For this review, we received two separate packs – meaning two 8GB modules. These modules offer memory speeds of up to 2666MHz. Each of the memory modules weighs around 9-gms and requires around 1.2V of power supply to function.
Installing them into laptops is a walk in the park. On a laptop, you would usually need to remove the screws around the edges and remove the bottom cover of the laptop.
Next, disconnect the power cable from the laptop’s battery to avoid any instances of a short circuit. You will see a dedicated area just above the motherboard to insert the RAM sticks.
These will have a sort of a spring mechanism to remove the RAM sticks and replace them with the new RAM modules.
Once you have removed and replaced them with the new Kingston ValueRAM KVR26S19S6/8, you will be good to go.
After installing the memory modules, our test laptop (ASUS ROG Strix Scar II) booted in at 2666MHz without any intervention at all on our part. However, if you would like to change any settings of the memory modules such as the timing, you can use tools such as Memory Tweaker to do it.
We used the MemTweakIt tool for ASUS laptops to change the settings between 2133 MHz, 2400 MHz, and 2666 MHz.
We also used AIDA64 for benchmarking the memory modules. The results we achieved were very good for a RAM module that comes in at a pocket-friendly price.
For a price of AED 119 for one memory module of 8GB, the Kingston ValueRAM KVR26S19S6/8 DDR4 2666MHz SODIMM does come across as an affordable option if you are on the market looking for a dependable memory module to upgrade the performance of an aging laptop.
