Gadgets

On page

We’ve gone rather old skool at the gadget cupboard this time. Much as we love Kindles and their ilk, real books still have a tactile edge over their electronic successors. They also give your colleagues something to gawk at during Zoom meetings. They do have their downsides though — keeping the page open during that anti-social solo lunch is annoying and makes it very hard to read. Multiple gadgets have been made for this, but this is the first we’ve seen with a pleasingly nautical theme.

www.page-anchor.com $50

Taking flight

DJI has just made drones even cooler, with a supremely accessible FPV Drone system, and a rather splendid new controller. You wear a VR-style headset to experience a first person view of flying in rather impressive 720p low latency video to control it. The drone’s camera also records in 4k. The matching racing drone is no slouch either with a top speed of 140 kmh, and there is a semi autopilot and collision detectors to aid drone survivability. And they’ve also introduced a splendid VR-style motion sensitive stick controller. The light that shines brightest also burns fastest, and the drone has a flight time of about 20 minutes (coincidentally the average life expectancy of a fresh WWI RFC pilot).

www.dji.com $1,500

Geek central

For those of us who like to see how things work, the modern wireless age can be rather opaque and uninspiring. But not for much longer, thanks to the Flipper Zero, a wired and wireless multitool billed as a Tamagochi for hackers. It covers radio protocols such as NFC Bluetooth and RFID, access control systems, hardware, IR signals and more. It’s fully open-source, customisable and Arduino IDE compatible so the sky is the limit as to what it can do. It even has a MicroSD card slot to transfer programs and data to other computers. Essentially, if you’re a geek, you almost certainly desire one of these. They are currently accepting preorders which for a $10 down payment gets you a discount of $40 off the product.

flipperzero.one $169