Publication History For : Paul Smart
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These headphones are rather nice, well-padded for good noise reduction and for those follicly challenged like me good padding on the headband. They are not small as they are over ear offerings and are also useful on cold winter days as ear warmers and just for good measure the Shure App gives you just the sounds you want through its equalizer.
There is 3.5cm of expansion on each side and when fully expanded it is 21cm from the tip of the earpieces to the centre of the extremely well padded headband. The distance between earpieces when vertical is 19cm. They come with a solid zip up case and the headphones fold and sit in the case one way only to give extra protection. Also in the box are a USB to USB ‘C’ cable to charge the headphones and a 2.5mm to 3.5mm cable to connect to MP3 or other such devices.
Google Pixel 4XL
Published in Phones
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Last year I told you about a Pixel 5 and if the advertising is correct the Pixel 6 is available so why should I now get the look at the Pixel 4XL. On the face of it a phone launched at least two years ago would be well past its sell by date. After a few days of use I was offered an upgrade to Android 12 so Google certainly do not consider it past it. Yes more recent phones offer more from their cameras but I still took some excellent pictures and videos.
With the exception of last year Devolo bring out updates and improvements to speed and performance of their product, be it in the Wi-Fi or even the connection over power line. So there is plenty to tell you about as 2021 had everyone more interested in not catching Covid than improving the speed of their below par Internet connection.
You plug their unit into a power socket somewhere near your Modem then at another point – on the same ring main – plug into another power socket. Whatever speed you are getting near your Modem should also be the same at the second – or third unit, so no long Ethernet cables which could otherwise be a trip hazard.
While I get to review all sorts of PC’s from entry level to very high end my own PC’s tend to cost somewhat less and after a while they become museum pieces like my Windows 7 offering which when Microsoft ended support was working but soon after that the power supply went ‘phutt’. So I struggled on but when Windows 11 arrived my Windows 10 PC was deemed ‘not worthy’ of it. So with not a lot of spare cash available I then started looking for a replacement.
This i5 offering with 8GB of memory fitted the bill and providing you have a flat panel that supports Display Port as I did, it fitted the bill. Free next day delivery was another plus so before another bill dropped into my inbox I ordered it. At 11AM next day DPD delivered it. This is just the unit and a kettle style power lead but it does come with 12 month warranty. So locate a keyboard and mouse and I was in business. This PC is a Desktop unit that was manufactured by HP/Compaq.
While a lot of earbuds claim ‘secure fit’ these certainly are that as the design pushes them into the ear with the fin fitting behind the ear they will certainly never fall out. They are somewhat larger than most other buds I have recently tested simply because the holding fin is part of the unit and not an optional extra as with most.
With a good part of the bud actually in the ear the biggest difference you notice is that it is 5cm from top to bottom, 1.5cm wide without the fin that has the flex required to fit most ears and this can more than double the width. The actual gel protrudes upwards from near the base of the unit meaning the flex pushes it further into the ear.
Over the years I have reviewed a lot of scanners, all previous units required installation not so here, just open the box plug the USB lead into your PC or Notebook, plug the other end into the rear of the unit. Open the lid that forms part of input tray add a sheet of paper and press the button. You now have a .PDF copy of that sheet of paper on your Desktop.
The Canon Portable Scanner ImageFormula R10 measures 28x9.5x4cm when closed; add another 10cm to the depth and 8cm to the height when open. The weight is something that with Desktop items I normally do not give but here as its portable I will, it is just on a kilo. The outside of the unit has the mini USB connector on the rear with a Kensington Lock Port to its right. Flip open the lid and towards the right is the start button that is it, there are no more controls.
While a Gimbal can give you smooth movement when hand held it is possible to get even smoother movement if you use the tripod provided attached to the Gimbal and control the movements of it even from a second phone so the Gimbal on the tripod just needs a firm footing to achieve results even professionals will admire.
The Zhiyan Smooth XS Gimbal has a minimum of 30cm from the base of the grip handle to the top of your landscaped phone, this can increase by up to another 25cm by extending the units arm, so 55cm should enable you to capture video above the tallest person, even then the unfurled tripod could give you another 13cm so now you have a possible 68cm.
Like a lot of people of my age I have problems with my back, I often find that laying down helps, even the old fashioned hot water bottle gives some assistance. So anything that can keep me upright and reduce the discomfort gets my vote. This item is a large strap that fits round the waist and heats up whilst you are wearing it.
The ThermoDR Body Wrap is one metre in length and 15cm wide. This is stated as ‘one size fits all’ well if your waist is 36inches of less then yes. However there is another piece of the material that is 50cm long and with the aid of the Velcro straps can I am told fit all waists up to 52 inches.
Like a lot of recent SmartPhones this was one of a range of models. Having told you about one of the lower specification’s model I now get to test the top of the range model – the one they use in the TV ads – so what does this latest offering from Apple have to temp you away from your current SmartPhone?
The Apple iPhone 13 Pro Max measures 16x7.8x1cm the last figure the thickness at the top left the square where the cameras protrude, the rest is .8cm thick, the weight is a substantial 240 grams probably due to using surgical grade stainless steel for the body. The viewable screen is far larger than the other models in the range with the notional diagonal imperial measurement of 6.7inches the other items in the range are no more than 6.1 inches.
Having previously told you about the Creative Outlier Gold and the Creative Outlier Air V2 offerings the latest to come my way is Creative Outlier Air V3. The strap line for V2 was ‘True Wireless Sweatproof In-Ears With Touch Controls’ while with V3 its ‘True Wireless Sweatproof In-Ears with Ambient Mode.
Outwardly the boxes look the same but the V3 has two more iconized points on the back – twelve instead of ten – under power packed features. Open the flip open lid and the text on the reverse is the same. So just fit the buds into the 7.5x4.5x2.8cm push open case and plug the supplied USB to USB ‘C’ lead into the end of the case to power up the buds.
iPhone 13 Pro Max
Published in Phones
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Like a lot of recent SmartPhones this was one of a range of models. Having told you about one of the lower specification’s model I now get to test the top of the range model – the one they use in the TV ads – so what does this latest offering from Apple have to temp you away from your current SmartPhone?
Nero used to be the best and quickest way to create a CD or DVD; now with so few PC’s even coming with an optical drive they have widened the net to include other things. I counted eighteen items in the grouping all accessible under the Nero Start icon. For some reason they include one other that needs to be downloaded separately to make it nineteen.
The initial download was quite quick but once you enter your serial number you find there is more work to do. I let it install everything and this took around 15 minutes. Not everything went to plan and neither my PC or Notebook would let me install as one item the main Nero component goes to the 335MB download which shows as 50% then restarts in a continuous process. Both these units have had Nero on in the past but I always remove any earlier version and restart.
Few PC’s or Notebooks now come with an Optical drive. Most things can now be downloaded direct to the PC. However what about the times you need to reinstall something that came on an Optical drive. Also how about files that you have previously stored on CD’s or DVD’s. So an external Optical drive still has a place in most of our lives. Here something I purchased for less than £10 including delivery.
This started as a means to use all the features of Nero Platinum Suite which I reviewed using the Acer Aspire 1 that like most recent offering has no optical drive. I searched online expecting to pay close to £20 which was figure I had paid a few years ago my search engine found one at £8.89 including delivery it looked to me the same as units costing nearly double, I was able to pay with PayPal in case it was some sort of scam.
Want to stay in contact to your young child but do not want to risk them losing a phone? The answer may be this Disney offering from Vodafone that links to an app in your phone your child can message or even phone you via an eSIM in the watch but they cannot access the Internet or other places so this maybe a step to independence for them before you finally give in and let them have a phone.
While this is described as a ‘Kids’ watch it does not look especially ‘kids’ like and I can see it being useful for an older person with learning difficulties to enable them to contact someone should they find themselves in an unfamiliar area. The watch face is oval at just over 4x4cm and just under 1.5cm thick. The unit sent to me had a greeny blue strap and white sides on the watch. The strap was big enough to fit my adult wrist.
This Acer Aspire 1 is the first unit I have seen that offered me the chance to upgrade to Windows 11; you can read my thoughts in an item published last week. So now having done the upgrade I move on to the review of this rather nice if somewhat lower power and capacity unit. It is however all wrapped up nicely with a 14 inch full HD screen, and it’s very well priced.
This Acer Aspire 1 measures 32x23x1.5cm and weighs 1494 grams. The screen is 30.5x17.4cm and this gives the notional imperial diagonal measurement of 14 inches. It comes with 4GB of RAM that has 3.81GB usable and has a 64GB SSD which is 57.1GB actual size. The Processor is an Intel Pentium Silver N6000 which runs at 1.1GHz. After the upgrade it now has Windows 11 Home version 21H2. There is an 84 key keyboard with the alpha keys being full size. There is 2.
Soda syphons have been around for well over 100 years; quite by chance I saw an item on them recently with some very early units on show. They were very popular in pubs before and after the Second World War. Then the refillable sort became popular with the top removable to refill with water and a small gas canister to carbonate it.
This offering from My Soda works differently having a large gas canister as part of the unit so you can get maybe 60litres or more of carbonated water. It is 40cm tall 8.5cm wide and 20cm deep. It comes with a 60litre canister of CO2 which fits into the underside of the unit.
Something I get to see all too infrequently are Soundbars especially ones that come with a separate sub-woofer. Here the latest offering from Creative Labs a company best known for everything ‘sound related’ such as sound cards, headphones, earbuds and speakers. So when I was offered this I was happy to give it a good thorough testing.
First the main unit it has four push buttons on the front on/off, volume -, volume + and source along the 26.5cm length, the back mains power in, three HDMI in a row (two in and one out) then in a row optical, USB and sub-woofer connector in a central area along the 23.5cm length of the back, the unit is 8cm tall and 6.5cm deep. The sub-woofer can be up to 100cm away from the main unit. It is 11cm wide, 24cm deep and 40cm tall with the speaker on the right side 18cm cm across.
Windows 11
Published in Laptops/PCs/Apple
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8 Dec 2021
Neither my desktop or my notebook are deemed worthy of getting Windows 11 so while we are told it is ‘about’ I have yet to see it. That is until today when a notebook from Acer arrived and doing the ever longer setup I got to a screen where I could either stay with Windows 10 or upgrade to Windows 11. So now I can tell you my initial thoughts about it.
You are warned the upgrade will not start until it has been on for a few minutes, after around 20 minutes a message appears saying the download is in progress and you will be notified when it is ready to install. The download and install took around an hour – my Wi-Fi is not the fastest – and then a very plain white on black screen ‘Working on updates xx% Please keep your computer on.
This phone folds horizontally across the centre of the screen it means when open you are able to have 6.7 inches of depth in a single view. When your finger moves across the central area of the screen there is a little resistance and if you look closely at the darkened screen you can see the crease in the screen, however does this affect anything else?
The Flip 3 from Samsung measures 8.2x7.2x1.3cm when closed, weighs 186 grams, flip it open and the first figure becomes 16.4cm. The viewable screen is 6.4x15.6cm which gives the notional diagonal imperial measurement of 6.7 inches. The screen display is 1080x2340.
Most items I get to review have Intel chips in and while specifications say something like Intel i5 or equivalent until I have tested an equivalent I am reluctant to say something will work. A while ago Parallels brought out a product that would allow Chromebooks to run Windows, most recent Chromebooks can run Android Apps but Windows was something new.
If your company or education establishment wants to save on the cost of Windows notebooks this Chromebook may help as it has the basic power and memory to run Parallels for Windows allowing you to run Windows in a ‘sandbox’ while still running Chrome on the machine your company will however still need Windows licenses for every Chromebook running it though, currently they are Windows 10.
A set of headphones from Sennheiser is always an interesting thing as you know they will be well made and use the best components. I knew it had been a while since one crossed my desk and a search found that I saw a pair of earbuds in 2018 but a pair of headphones was even further back in 2017.
The Sennheiser HD 450SE Wireless measure 19cm from the base of the cups to the centre of padded headband and 15.5cm to have the earpieces horizontal, this is with the full 3.5cm of side extension extended. The headphones weigh 240 grams. Each earpiece moves by around 15 degrees inwards to give a comfortable fit. As these are a pair of over ear headphones there is a good amount of external noise cancelation naturally. While these are Wireless Headphones there is a 2.
I normally steer well clear of games but there a few that interest me even at my advanced age. Card games were a staple of my youth and in my teens I used to play a mean game of Cribbage that supported a meager first wage working in a toy and sports shop. Now I have a thirst for learning that was never an option at school so knowing about things that interest me is a subject that thirty odd years ago had the name of Edutainment.
I was never a train spotter and I suppose I was lucky growing up seeing the occasional steam train and carriages that still had ladies only compartments as well as a mix of classes. Here is a card game that can be fun and still give the players some extra knowledge. The pack of cards is thirty different cards each featuring a train from around the world and each card shows five facts about the train. They are Debut year, Speed, Range, Fame Ranking and Top Trumps Rating.
Apple seem to offer new phones each year so here is one of the recently launched iPhone 13 range. I have been using it out and about over the last few weeks with especial attention paid to its photographic abilities. So what does it offer the user apart from a name to justify its high end price?
The iPhone 13 measures 14.5x7x.8cm the exception is the top left corner where the two cameras and LED flash increase the depth to 1cm. It weighs 174 grams and feels very solid in your hand, mine was a mid-blue colour. The screen is13.6x6.4cm which gives the notional diagonal imperial measurement of just less than 6 inches - just over 6 inches is claimed - there is a notch 2.5x.5cm in the centre of the top of the screen for the forward facing camera.
Recently I have told you about a small USB camera and a Bluetooth headset with far better than normal range. Here is a flat panel that has both built in and for good measure it has lights built in both sides to improve the view people get of you as it frames you better, this is certainly an all in one device for those Zoom calls. This is a real personal meeting display for those occasions when you cannot meet personally.
The screen and surround is 56cm wide and from top of the screen to the top of the stand is 37cm. The viewable screen itself is 48x26.5cm which gives the notional diagonal imperial measurement of 21½ inches. The stand clips into the rear of the screen it is 30x18cm and raises it by 8cm from your desk. The power lead enters the main body of the screen just above the stand. The total weight is less than 7KG.
If your company or education establishment wants to save on the cost of Windows notebooks this Chromebook may help as it has the basic power and memory to run Parallels for Windows allowing you to run Windows in a ‘sandbox’ while still running Chrome on the machine your company will however still need Windows licenses for every Chromebook running it though, currently they are Windows 10.
There is a list of Chromebooks from all the major players but so far only Acer have gone out of their way to find me units that qualify. The basic requirements are an i5 Processor or equivalent, 8GB of RAM and 128GB of storage as with any such project more is better. Chromebooks are great for basic things like word processing, working with emails and browsing the Internet.
A router is not something we tend to change that often unless there is a reason. These days the coverage a router gives is either enough for your needs or it isn’t and then you get an extender of some sort. However I found out recently that there is a new updated version of Wi-Fi as those of you who read my recent Motorola SmartPhone review will perhaps give you a reason to upgrade.
The Eagle Pro AI AX1500 Smart Router R15 to give its full name seems to me to be a little long for a title. The main body of it is 20x13x4cm without anything plugged in, it has four aerials two on the back and one either side all move through 90 degrees from vertical to horizontal. There are four pin hole LED’s on the front, four Ethernet ports on the rear the yellow one goes to your modem and the other three allow you to connect things needing Ethernet.
If your dog is just 10% overweight it can reduce its life expectancy by up to 30%. So feeding it the correct amount can save you money not only in food but also in vet’s bills. This offering from Pawbby is a pets bowl with a scale built in so that you only feed your dog the exact amount. While I have mentioned dogs it could equally well work for a cat.
The food bowl fits in the scale and is made of stainless steel so is easily removed for cleaning and it fits in such a way that it is tilted by 7% towards your dog this I am told is the amount required to help the dogs spine when bending its neck to the bowl. Yes it links to an App via Bluetooth so you know everything you need to. This offers feeding instructions and hints and tips. The scale in the bowl can weigh in 1 gram increments up to 2kilos.
A set of in ear earbuds from Creative bundled with the SXFI AMP is what this latest offering from Creative Labs to cross my desk is, and while I do not normally want to know the price before completing the review on this occasion I needed to know if this was one or two reviews and as it’s a bundle only price that is 36.67% of the separate selling price.
The wired earbuds have magnetic backs, 12cm down the lead from the buds is a tiny 2x.5x.5cm control a further 20cm down the two leads become one and stay joined for the final 80cm till the gold plated 3.5mm plug. You can use the earbuds like this if your phone still has a 3.5mm socket.
Gen 6 is the latest range of SmartWatches from Fossil. This offering has touch screen and three buttons on the right side and it can do almost anything once connected to your SmartPhone and indeed you could spend a lot of time getting to the screen you want to get to but sad to say so far it has stubbornly refused to make the coffee.
The Gen 6 smart watch from Fossil has a 44mm wide screen and is stated to run for 24 hours plus between charges. I pushed this and got just over 32 hours but it will always depend on what you do with it and if the screen is always on or not. It comes with a USB to magnetic connection to the watch back it is stated to charge to 80% in a little over 30 minutes, in my tests it took 42 minutes and a full recharge took just under the hour.
This is a Bluetooth Headset with a big plus – added distance – whereas most state 10metres and if you live in a home with solid walls like me it’s probably a bit less with this unit its more than double and I can even go down my garden and still hear and talk on it without drop outs. The magic is the little USB dongle that fits in a standard USB port.
This is an on ear headset that allows you to have the microphone on either the left or the right of your mouth, unlike most that have to be on the left and it knows which side you have it. Unusually the controls are on the right earpiece. The earpieces move through 180 degrees, there is a USB ‘C’ connection an on/off slider button and a red mute button.
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