Today I’m looking at some inexpensive smart plugs from Amazon, that enable you to use voice commands via Amazon Alexa or Google Home to control whatever’s plugged into them. So if I have a lamp plugged in, I can say “Alexa, turn on the lamp”. You can plug pretty much whatever you like into them. As well as lamps, I’ve got heaters, dehumidifiers and fans plugged into … [Read more...]
Review: RAVPower FileHub (newest model). Inexpensive wireless storage for your tablet or smartphone
The RAVPower FileHub is a clever gadget that has two main uses. It can be used as a wireless hard drive for your smartphone or tablet, or it can backup your camera’s SD cards when you’re on the move. With storage on smartphones and tablets always at a premium, especially with Apple devices which have no expansion options, this former use is of particular interest to … [Read more...]
Free unlimited storage for your iPad or iPhone, using your Mac or PC
Limited storage on iPads and iPhones has always made purchasing a device with enough capacity a difficult decision. Apple charges a lot of money to jump up to their larger capacities, as much as £1 or $1 per GB for example to increase the basic iPad’s rather paltry 32GB to 128GB. And you don’t always know exactly how much capacity you will need. Apple still don’t let you … [Read more...]
Stryd running power meter review. Turning my Apple Watch into the ultimate running watch.
Stryd is a wearable running gadget that clips onto the shoe laces of one of your running shoes and measures your running power, as well as a number of other metrics. The data is all fed in real time to your running watch or in my case Apple Watch. Typically runners measure their effort by feel, heart rate, or more commonly by pace from their running watch. You might try … [Read more...]
Anker SoundCore 2 Bluetooth speaker review. Is this the best budget portable speaker?
https://youtu.be/Z2sAZce46_8 Anker are a popular brand that appear to be sold exclusively through Amazon. They are particularly well known for their power banks, chargers and cables. But they also sell some very good value portable Bluetooth speakers. One of their most popular models is the , a compact Bluetooth speaker, with 24 hours of claimed battery life and an IPX5 … [Read more...]
Amazfit Bip smart watch review. What do you get for £50 or $70? Quite a lot in fact …
The Amazfit Bip smart watch has a built in optical heart rate monitor and GPS receiver, a gorilla glass touch display and up to 45 days of battery life and it costs from only £45 or $65, depending on where you buy it from. But is it any good? https://youtu.be/mRVbHeSGjmU First impressions It's hard to know what to expect from a smart watch at this price, but first … [Read more...]
How to use Google Lens to identify anything. And without a Pixel phone …
https://youtu.be/e_2kNYjMqpk Google recently announced that even users without their premium Pixel phones could try Google Lens, that lets you learn more about real life objects. It's able to recognise landmarks, flowers, animals and food and can grab text from business cards or anything else for that matter. With the latest version of Google Photos, you can tap on a photo … [Read more...]
The iPhone X review. The best iPhone yet, but is it worth £1000?
https://youtu.be/YDlreZmGvCA I've had the latest iPhone from Apple for almost 3 months now, so plenty of time to determine whether its worth its £1000 or $1000 price tag, to me at least. The iPhone X has a new 5.8" HDR OLED screen, face recognition, is waterproof to IP67, has a wide angle and short telephoto lens both with image stabilisation, supports wireless charging and … [Read more...]
Could this be the best budget drone? Hubsan H507A X4 Star Pro review.
https://youtu.be/kMJ5RfYtdyY Drones from big names like DJI start from around £450, or $450 for the Spark. This is a lot of money for something you may not end up using very much. At the other end of the market there are plenty of cheap drones which tend to be lacking a lot of the features that make the more expensive drones so tempting. The Hubsan X507A drone is around £70 … [Read more...]
GoPro Hero 5 Black Review – the Goldilocks of the GoPro action camera range?
https://youtu.be/JafrgncQOl0 The GoPro Hero 5 Black action camera sits in the middle of GoPro's line up of its popular cameras and has a retail price of around £400 or $400. It's waterproof to 10m without any additional enclosure, comes with a 2" touch screen, records 4k video. It can be controlled with your voice and it's tiny! But who's it meant for and what advantage does … [Read more...]
How to control any Sonos speaker using voice (Alexa)
**UPDATE 10/10/17: There is now a native Sonos Alexa skill - take a look at my more recent article.** Sonos announced some time ago a partnership with Amazon to enable Alexa support. This would allow voice control of your Sonos system via an Amazon Echo or Dot. It's almost a year later and there is still no support. But if you're getting tired of waiting, it's possible to … [Read more...]
How to use your camera to create 360° panoramas for Google Street View using free software, and without a tripod
I'm going to describe from start to finish how to create this interactive 360° spherical image (click and drag around the image - use the scroll wheel to zoom): 360° panoramic photography is a unique way of capturing images that can be interacted with, either via dragging and zooming with your mouse, or with a VR headset. There are three parts to creating an image … [Read more...]
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