Publication History For : Paul Smart
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While some Tower and Desktop systems still have 5.25 inch drive bays I have recently seen some who only support 2.5 inch bays rather the norm of 3.5 inch bays. So this latest offering from Toshiba is most likely to be used in a NAS (network attached storage) solution.
I am sure there must be boxed versions of this product but mine arrived in ‘drive only’ silvered envelope so all you get inside the envelope is the drive, not even the screws required to attach it to whatever you connect it to. It is 14.4x10x2.4cm and is marked as a surveillance unit. I replaced a smaller capacity drive in my NAS with this and let the special software in the NAS format it and it then was ready to use.
While Vodafone sell all the major brands of phones they also do their own range of phones designed and tested to work on the Vodafone network. Here I am looking at their latest offering the Vodafone Smart V10 that will not cost nearly as much as certain recent review items.
The Vodafone Smart V10 measures 15x7x.8cm and it weighs 147grams. The viewable screen is 13.7x6.5cm which gives notional diagonal imperial measurement of 5.9 inches; the screen display is 1560x720 which is 19:9. The selfie camera is a notch in the centre of the top of the screen. The front is shiny black and the sides and back are chrome colour. Going around the unit has the on/off rocker towards the top of the right side with the on/off button just below in a contrast red colour.
This 24inch touch panel can be used as any other panel landscape when vertical but also at any point through 90 degrees of tilt till it is landscape horizontal and with its always attached stand it remains totally stable in any position.
While I have reviewed over touch panels before that enable any computer – via USB lead – to become a touch computer this offering works just as well in the normal near vertical (landscape) position as it does horizontal just by pushing the panel back on its stand to a -90 degree position or indeed any amount in between vertical and horizontal and it is rock solid however you use it. The screen on this Philips panel measures 54x33x1.
If you want a SmartPhone that can offer almost everything that the latest super offerings can do but at a lower price then this unit from Honor may well tick all the boxes. A lot of recent phones are sold on the cameras capabilities and this one has AI built in.
The Honor 20 Lite measures 15.3x7.2x.7cm and weighs 165grams while the viewable screen is 14.3x6.6cm and that gives the notional diagonal imperial measurement of just over 6.2inches. The pixel resolution is 2340x1080 but you can lower this in settings to 1560x720 if you need to save battery. Talking about battery the 3440mAh battery should last well into the second day even for a heavy user, it supports 10w fast charging.
It been a while since I have reviewed a camera that can fit in your pocket, of course most recent SmartPhones have better than average cameras but I do not know any that can shoot underwater as this latest offering from Olympus can.
While it was clearly marked sample and it was just the camera no leads and most importantly no manual, I was able to download the manual sometime later and this helped me to fill in some of the things that the camera is capable of that I was unable to figure out without it. I defy most to get anything like the best from this unit without a thorough read of the 168 pages of the manual.
If like me the place where your door bell lives is quite a thin door surround then this latest offering from Ring may just solve the problem as it is that much thinner than earlier versions of their doorbell with the camera to allow you to see who is calling so if it is someone you don’t want to see just stay in your seat and ignore the ring.
Of course if you are not in their ring on your bell is notified with video to your SmartPhone and then you can say sorry I can’t come to the door at the moment to get rid of a suspicious character or if it’s that courier that you have waited in for during the previous two days you can make arrangement for redelivery or better still ask him to leave it with your neighbour. It is 11.5x4.5x2cm.
It’s unusual for recent SmartPhone launches to be made without review product being available, on one such recent launch I was told ‘next week’ and it has still not arrived, and here in the case of the Honor 20 it was nearly six weeks but it was launched just after a rant by Donald Trump against this phones parent company, still it has now arrived to receive tests over a very short two week timeframe.
Most phones that arrive come with a Getting Started guide, not so here.
Recently my review of an 8th Generation Kindle was published and it was something I had not seen for a number of versions. Here another such items a Fire Tablet which I see – over the years - I had tried three previous versions, now it comes with Alexa built in so it is possible to talk to your Tablet. So what exactly has been happening with the Fire Tablet recently?
The Fire 7 tablet from Amazon measures 19x11.4x1cm and weighs 288 grams. The viewable screen is 9x15.2cm which gives the diagonal imperial measurement of 7inches. A full charge via trickle charge is 3½ hours boot up is 20 seconds and shutdown is 3 seconds. Going around the outside has the micro USB slot on the right side, the base is clear; the right side has the speaker near the base. The top has volume up and down buttons, 3.
This is one supplier who kept their promise to send samples of their items for me to review from my visit to the annual Housewares show in London. So here a microwave rice steamer and a larger than normal storage box with or without inset basket.
It is 14cm tall and almost square at 20cm wide it weighs 315 grams. The attached cardboard wrapper describes this as a 2.7 litre rice and grain cooker suitable for up to four people. The receipt book inside the container goes into detail about fish and chicken dishes as well but they seem to be for other items in the same range. Looking closely at the impressed characters on the base of the container has it suitable to use up to 140 degrees Celsius and as low as -18 degrees Celsius.
Some files and documents are important or perhaps even more valuable than that, if you run a business they could mean getting a contract – or not – if the information they contain fell into the hands of your competitors, so knowing who sees what is vital. This tool from Yubico means only those in possession of the USB key do see the encrypted data, no need for special passwords just the USB key.
For those who want more these keys can be used as a second level of protection as well as standard passwords and even as a third level with ‘Two Factor’ and ‘Multi Factor’. The keys can work with standard USB, USB ‘C’ and even NFC (near field) most prevalent with SmartPhones. FIDO 2 support is now standard with the YubiKey 5 & 5C.
This camera can work indoors or outdoors, possible advantages of the ‘battery’ version over the ‘wired’ version is that you do not need to drill a hole through an external wall; another is that if placed on a shelf it is quickly relocatable.
The camera is round at 6cm and is 9cm tall; if you use the fitted stand this will add 2cm to the overall height and depth. Apart from sitting on a shelf or fitment it can be attached to a wall or ceiling and almost anything else as the stand can be twisted and turned to virtually any angle. However if you are using this battery version of the camera outside be aware that the battery does need to be removed to be recharged so sighting must be a consideration.
I must be getting old as I remember the very first Kindle. These days so many people are reading them on the bus or train, what you rarely see is a real book being read. The kindle of course has a huge advantage over a book be it hardback or paperback in that they weigh even less and for good measure you do not have to turn over the corner of a page it knows where you got to.
The latest iteration on the Kindle e-book reader measures 16x11x.8cm and weighs 168 grams. The viewable screen is 11.2x9.2cm. At the default font size this can show 20 lines of text with the addition of percentage of book read and other information below this. This Kindles display is 6 inches from corner to corner.
This is a small but extremely powerful tower system. Acer does a number of different versions under the same name and model number both with and without an SSD drive, it also has various Intel and AMD processors so do think about all this prior to selecting where to purchase it from as certain models like this one are only available from two outlets.
It’s 35cm from front to back but add another 5cm for cables to be inserted. It is 16.5cm wide and 35cm tall. The top has a wireless charging plate towards the front. The front has a vertically mounted optical drive and towards the right near the base an SD card port, a USB ‘C’ and a USB3 port (always on) as well as 3.5mm headphone and microphone sockets. The back has kettle style mains lead, lower down are four USB2 sockets and below this two USB3 ports and an Ethernet port.
A visit to annual Exclusively Housewares show had me given four assorted silicon kitchen tools to scrape and whisk with - at least that’s what I assume I was given them for – they come in a range of colours and one thing they all had in common is their ability not to melt at temperatures up to 300 degrees Celsius and for those like me of the older generation that close to 700 degrees Fahrenheit.
I would describe this as large whisk as 15cm of the total length is made up of the six pairs of (12 in all) of coated wires that put volume into whatever you are whisking. This is an easy to clean whisk that can be placed in the dishwasher. It is guaranteed to be odourless and tasteless on whatever you whisk. Unlike a lot of older whisks that can damage sensitive items this is guaranteed not to damage sensitive surfaces.
This is an alternative to in/on ear offerings ideal when ‘small’ is required, great for personal listening. The battery should last up to six hours so ideal for studying as a clue to when to take a break, two hours to recharge it and also your own personal battery.
It is a 6.5cm cube with sound coming from the top and both sides. The rear has 3.5mm socket for Auxiliary input, a micro USB socket for charging and an on/off button with LED in it. The bottom has four tiny feet to stop the possibility of the case scratching anything it sits upon. This is primary a Bluetooth unit and linking to your SmartPhone is simple, once paired when turned on it will immediately find your device.
I do not watch much live TV on commercial channels but two adverts stick in the mind, the first one for a remote doorbell and the second where a lady has a range of garden ornaments and once one was stolen she installed one of these Hive cameras and now tells the thief – when he returns – to get out of her garden.
Unlike a lot of small external cameras this does not run on batteries so it requires the supplied USB lead to be connected. The lead supplied is 7.5 metres long so should be able to reach a mains outlet in most homes without problem but of course it does mean drilling a hole through a wall, a door, or a window frame to use it. The camera is a 6cm cube with a 4cm magnetic fitment that attaches to its rear; just below this is where the supplied 7.5metre micro USB to USB lead attaches.
This panel could answer all your viewing requirements. It’s big enough to watch a film comfortably and its range of connections work for a PC or a Notebook/Tablet and even your phone as it even has a USB ‘C’ connection. I used it in HD and a range of other screen sizes up to 4K and it can work in both landscape and portrait modes.
It is 71x41x1.6cm, its stand is circular with one edge flattened this makes it between 23 and 26cm across it raises the panel by between 5 and 24cm from your desk in landscape mode and up to 9cm in portrait mode. The connections are in a line on the back; to the right of the connection arm is the mains lead. To the left of the connection arm are two HDMI then Display Port, USB ‘C’, Ethernet, four – two by two – USB ports and finally Display Port out.
While I have restored files and folders which have become corrupted the only REAL test is when your computer fails to boot and at the very least this is not a trivial process. Yes my hard disc crashed, so first job is to get it removed from the computers case, second get a replacement drive and then with the aid of the Acronis disc a chance to do a complete restore.
So while you may see less of a single brand due to a disagreement with Mr Trump, others may benefit and one such brand is Samsung. Here I am looking at the latest offering from Samsung the Galaxy S10, so what does it have to offer.
It is 15.5x7.5x.8cm and weights 177 grams. The notional diagonal imperial screen measurement is 6.4 inches. The screen resolution is FHD+ 2280x1080 but can be cranked up to 3040x1440 if your eye sight is better than mine using an option in Display. There is the front facing camera towards the right edge near the top of the screen, with the other normal things like clock, Wi-Fi, battery state and 4G indicator to its left.
I recently told you about two accessories the Arlo Doorbell and Arlo Chime that work via an Arlo Base Station and that comes with the HD wireless camera that is what I looking at in this review as well as the all-important Base Station.
Setting up the base station is just a matter of attaching the supplied mains lead and plugging the supplied Ethernet cable into the router and the base station. As with most recent items it is controlled by your SmartPhone via the Arlo App that you download from the iOS or Android store, next create an Arlo account. Now with the camera within a metre of the base station follow the onscreen instructions to link them together, that’s it.
At the start of April a review of a sibling unit to this one can be found on Gadgetspeak. So here what is quite a similar product on the face of it, however there are surprises like a fingerprint reader that is normally invisible on the screen.
It is 15.5x6.5x.8cm and weighs 159 grams. The viewable screen has the optional diagonal imperial measurement of 6.4inches. Unlike some recent phones that have no edges here there is approximately .3cm on all sides. The display is still over 90% of the screen and ideal for those Apps that require touches near the edge. The top has a central notch on the screen, which drops down into the display in a teardrop by up to .5cm. The back is shiny and moves from Blue to Purple from top to bottom.
Finding a small tower is not easy, Dell describe this as a ‘Small Form Factor Workstation’. I was asked to find a sub £600 small Tower. This however does not actually fill the request but it is a very powerful system that would do everything you need. On the face of it the price is only just over that figure but as it’s sold as a business unit VAT has to be added.
It is 29cm tall 8cm wide and when cables are inserted in the back 30cm deep, so it is very small. However it is very powerful with Intel i3, i5 and i7 processor options. The front has a vertically mounted optical drive and the on/off button to the right of this should be a multi card socket (not on the unit sent to me), below this a 3.5mm headphone socket two USB ports side by side and below these a USB3 port and a USB ‘C’ port.
There are a number of video door bells on the market, here something different a door bell that probably still allows your original bell to function but it also allows you to communicate with the caller from your SmartPhone which could be with you miles away or in your lounge and the caller never needs to know if you are there or not, so cold callers cannot test their patter on you.
If you want video views of your callers then Arlo also has a range of offerings, but here I am looking at a door bell that works both locally and via the internet. It is 9x4.5x2.5cm and as such is less noticeable as anything more than just a door bell. If you already have a mains doorbell then you probably can just remove that and put this in its place and in a good percentage of cases the original bell or chime will still function.
This phone is one for those who like to watch films as the format is taller and slimmer than most, of course it still does everything that a phone should it’s just the screen shape that makes landscape use the most likely way to use it.
The Sony Xperia 10 measures 15.3x6.5x.7cm and weighs 162 grams. Startup is 20 seconds and shutdown is 2.5 seconds. The notional diagonal imperial screen measurement is 6inches. Going around the outside the top has a 3.5mm headphone socket, the right side has the on/off button fingerprint scanner and volume up/down rocker. The base has the speakers with USB ‘C’ socket in the centre of the bottom.
Often a tall or wide building has problems receiving a Wi-Fi signal from a single point, one solution is power over Ethernet giving a connection to a loft or other far flung place but this could still cause problems with anything that is handheld as signals can be lost. Another possible solution is what I am looking at here Zyxel Multi U.
It works in a different way, one unit is connected to your router and can then connect to the next unit and even a third unit but if the signal is stronger from the third to the first it find this so the three units work together with all movements being transparent. For those who still need Ethernet each unit has the ability to connect via that, so not only can you roam around with a handheld device anything that is static can be connected via cable.
Size matters and here this is a small tower that can deliver as much as most large towers except of course take up far less desk space. So if you need expansion then this unit can give it as there are three slots although one is occupied in the setup sent to me by the graphics card. So what has Acer squeezed into this small format desktop tower.
It is 34cm deep, 16cm wide and 33cm tall. There is a vertically mounted optical drive 6cm down from the top just right of the centre of the front, above this is the turn on button. Towards the bottom of the front on the right edge a pair of always on connections USB ‘C’ and USB3 and below these 3.5mm sockets for headphone and microphone. On the front edges at the top are two small flip out handles to hold your headphones as for a gamer hearing tiny sounds can be life or death.
Not my Genre of choice, however I can appreciate it, and even if your Genre is whatever passes for pop music today a large amount of it is based on the notes of classical tunes even if they are sometimes delivered in a different order and often to a different beat. This is also true of what is my Genre jazz which now stretches back over 100 years.
While both Deezer and Spotify offer a good amount of classical music as well Qobuz to mention but three this service from Primephonic is totally classical. While this service is not new it now has extra features including something that is both useful and possibly vital for those travelling, first to save mobile data and second to save sanity when journeys do not run to time. My first look was as Sergey Rachmaninov and his Piano Concerto No.
This flat panel from Dell ticks a lot of boxes it can be viewed Landscape or Portrait, you can connect to it via Display Port, HDMI or USB ‘C’ and it also has USB ports, and for good measure a screen that does take up unnecessary space.
These days a lot of people run their life from a SmartPhone however writing a long email or viewing a large spreadsheet on a phone – however large the screen – is still a strain on the eyes even for those with 20:20 vision. So when in the home or office just connect via USB ‘C’ and life should become easier.
This is a more unusual power bank in that it has two outlet ports that charge at different rates. It is also more like a character rather than just a device to let you slurp power when away from mains power for whatever USB device.
True wire free connection as this kit is Wi-Fi and uses rechargeable batteries that should last months between charges. This means you just need to find somewhere to fix an external camera, this kit also includes a second camera and a motion detector even for total darkness so while other kits say they are wireless often you still need something going through an external wall.
The kit is controlled by the siren which can be set to on or off, this connects to your router via a supplied Ethernet lead and this also needs mains power once this is connected you download an App to your phone from either the Android or iOS store. Once you have created an account just follow the prompts and in around two minutes you should be setup. You now have two cameras each around 8x5x7.5cm although they are more oval than rectangular.
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