Make your outdoors great

Technology

Make your outdoors great

July is time to embrace the great outdoors. If your hard work has the garden looking great, it’s time to enjoy the benefits with our gadgets for summer days and nights.

MUSIC

One of our favourite pieces of outdoor technology is the wireless speaker, which can soundtrack anything from sunbathing to social events. You don’t need to spend a lot of money on a wireless Bluetooth speaker though. For example, Sony’s excellent SRS XB01 can be bagged for £19.99, runs for six hours between charges and is water-resistant. If you can afford higher-end models you’ll get even better sound and smart features. The Sonos Move may well be the best portable speaker in the world right now; it’s just a shame it costs £399.

LIGHTING

Another favourite is outdoor lighting. There are two options: solar lighting that costs nothing to run and smart lighting that runs from a power socket. The former is available in many designs, from single posts to curtains of fairy lights, colour-changing flowers, security spotlights and decking lights – all you need is a reasonably sunny spot for the solar panel. Smart lighting isn’t as cheap, but it’s tons of fun. Philips’ excellent Hue lighting continues to add new outdoor ideas, with a range that now includes spotlights and wall lights as well as light strips and floodlights designed to deliver more subtle ambient light. Just like the indoor versions you can choose from endless colours, create your own lighting ‘recipes’ and set up automation that’ll trigger the lights either at set times or when specific things happen, such as the sun going down or you arriving home. It’s a fairly expensive

option, however – individual lights such as the Appear, Resonate and Lily lights cost £129 each – and the lights’ hub needs to be within range of your Wi-Fi router.

HEAT

Although the UK gets comfortably warm July days, the temperature drops dramatically when the sun starts to go down. Instead of a fairly wasteful gas-powered heater, an electric one with halogen bulbs uses a lot less energy and is much cheaper to run, although you need to be within reach of a plug socket for them to work. Unlike gas heaters, which heat the air around them, electric heaters heat the things they light up but not the air in between: you might find a smaller tabletop heater (from around £70) or a parasolmounted heater (around £89) keeps you warmer than a more powerful big one that you have to sit further away from. Please mention The Villager and Town Life when responding to adverts

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