THE APPLE WATCH IS HERE ...ANDIT’S ABOUTTIME
GADGETS / APPS / GEAR
iPHONE 6
THE VERDICT
LUCKEY Gatekeeper of the virtual realm
+
5.5in 6 PLUS
WHITE Reinventing your record collection MUSK Revolutionising travel on Earth... and in space
NAKAMOTO Replacing money with code
STUFF INNOVATORS 2014
Meet the visionaries remaking your world
BREAZEAL Mother of a million robots
SUPERHEROES OF TECH
www.stuff.tv / Nov 2014 / £4.60
GREEN MACHINES Wegolong-distanceinthreeeco-friendlysupercars G
Make time for a test drive | Search: Outlander PHEV Visit: mitsubishi-cars.co.uk to find your nearest dealer
THE WORLD’S FIRST 4WD PLUG-IN HYBRID SUV FROM £28,249 - £34,999 Including £5,000 Government Plug-in Car Grant6
1. Official EU MPG test figure shown as a guide for comparative purposes and may not reflect real driving results. 2. 5% BIK compared to average rate of 25%+. 3. 32 mile EV range achieved with full battery charge. 510 miles achieved with combined full battery and petrol tank. Actual range may vary depending on driving style and road conditions. 4. Low-cost British Gas plug-in vehicle charging package available – ask your dealer for more information. Offer ends 31st March 2015. 5. Domestic plug charge: 5 hours, 16 Amp home charge point: 3.5 hours, 80% rapid charge: 30mins. 6. Prices shown include VAT (at 20%), exclude VED and First Registration Fee. Metallic paint extra. Model shown is an Outlander PHEV GX4h at £33,399 including metallic paint. Prices correct at time of going to print. For more information about the Government Plug-in Car Grant please visit www.gov.uk/plug-in-car-van-grants.
Outlander PHEV range fuel consumption in mpg (ltrs/100km): Full Battery Charge: infinite, Depleted Battery Charge: 48mpg (5.9), Weighted Average: 148mpg (1.9), CO2 Emissions: 44 g/km.
CONS p24
ON THE COVER
p113
p14 Watch this…
HOT STUFF 14 The Hot Four O Apple Watch O Apple iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus O Moto Hint O Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note Edge 24 Vital stats Fujifilm X30 A powered-up new version of the X20, with a tilting 3in screen and added Wi-Fi 30 Gigapixel Jaguar XE Jaguar flies its new model over Tower Bridge by helicopter, just for the hell of it 34 Choice Globes New ways to have a planet in your bedroom 38 Games Drive snarling supercars in Project Cars 42 Apps How to fuse your face with that of your cat 46 Vital stats Casio Exilim EX-FR10 An action cam with a detachable screen 48 Our month What we did when no one else was looking 50 Your month Upcoming films, games, shows and all that
TESTS
p18 6 of the best?
p98
p55 World leaders
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72 First test Motorola Moto 360 As round as a satsuma and so swish you’ll show it off to everyone you know 74 Approved Stuff-approved apps for… …spicing up your social life, raiding dungeons and dodging flesh-eating plants 90 Tested Galaxy S5 Mini A micro version of the bestselling blower 98 Tested Lapierre Overvolt A mountain bike with an electric secret 100 Tested Games O Destiny O BioShock (iOS edition) 113 Group test Budget smartphones Rather not spend your life savings on a device you’ll lose or break within the week? 116 Reviews Sensory snacks Vampires in a film, super-nerds in a book
WIN! p53
TOP 10
p105
OF EVERYTHING
p126
Looking to buy something but need a bit of advice? Turn to our Stuff Top 10s: our expert listings of all gadgetry, from p131 TVS
T HO Y BU
FEATURES
Samsung UE55HU7500 +++++ 2014’s star TV p140
PROJECTS
55 Stuff Innovators 2014 Our pick of the greatest inventors, scientists, designers and entrepreneurs on Earth 77 Techspedition The Alps in 3D We head for the hills with the researchers mapping an entire mountain range with drones 80 Green machines Stuff gets behind the wheel of three ecofriendly supercars for a coast-to-coast dash 93 Fashion Winter coats The cold months are coming, so stop shivering and put one of these on 105 Design Lighting As photographers and estate agents say, light is everything, so lamp up your life 154 Next big thing? Sound-charging phones 146 Running low? Go to a gig and turn those sound vibrations into sweet electricity
122 Beta yourself Cooking You can’t be a student forever – it’s time to go beyond microwaved spag bol 124 Playlist Podcasts If your eyes are busy doing important things, give your ears something to do 126 Instant upgrades Fireworks Remember, remember, the fifth of November is the night to go OTT without losing the plot 128 Re-awesomise… your Chromebook If you’ve fallen out of love with your little laptop, here are five ways to fall back in 129 Gadget doctor Out with it, then – our resident tech specialist promises not to laugh 130 5-minute hacks If nothing else, at least… Climb Everest from your desk O Make texting fun again O Give YouTube a facelift p100
WEARABLES
W NE RY T EN LG G Watch ++++, LG’s Android Wear wristputer p150 HEADPHONES
ICE PR P O DR Sony XBA-4iP +++++ Get some in-ear excellence for less p135
p80
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webOS SMART TV MADE SIMPLE
This is the future of telly; other manufacturers had better be watching . It’s All Possible. www.lg.com.uk/webOS
WELCO
While invisibility and X-ray vision are all very fancy, there are real, human superpowers all around us. Parents who know how to muster Zen-like super-patience; friends who seem to be able to read your mind; people who can reverse-park without even thinking about it. But perhaps the human superpower that makes the most difference is the ability to come up with an original idea. When it comes to changing the world, the power of invention is up there with being able to shoot laser beams out of your eyes, and our Innovators (p55) all have it in spades. Of course, it’s not just people that can have superpowers: flying, six-eyed robots (p77) can come in pretty handy too, especially if you’re working on one of the most ambitious scientific expeditions this century. And you don’t have to be David Hasselhoff to know that cars can be Super, especially if they’re the petrol-sipping green machines (p80) we drove across the country this month. You can get in on the act yourself – suit up with the power to resist a chilly breeze (p93), acquire the power to create deliciousness (p122), and turn yourself into an early cyborg with the best wearable in the world – which has to be the Moto 360 (p72) or the new Apple Watch. Speaking of which…
THIS MONTH IN STUFF’S iOS APP EDITION Q Check out behind-thescenes pictures from our eco-supercars test Q Animated, interactive pages, videos and more hi-res pictures Android fan? Stuff is also available on Google Play, Zinio, Exact Editions and Samsung’s Papergarden.
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Will Dunn, Editor /
[email protected] / @willydunn
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[email protected] Call us 020 8267 5036 Teddington Studios, Broom Rd, Teddington, Middx TW11 9BE, UK Editorial Editor Will Dunn Deputy Editor Tom Wiggins Production Editor Richard Purvis Consulting Editor Fraser Macdonald Features Editor Mark Wilson Sub-Editor Emily May Brand Art Editor Chee-Chiu Lee Deputy Art Editor Ross Presly Senior Designer Will Clarke Reviews Editor Tom Parsons Reviewer Sophie Charara Staff Writer Esat Dedezade Editor, Stuff.tv Marc McLaren Deputy Editor, Stuff.tv Stephen Graves Editorial Assistant Max Langridge Editor-in-Chief Will Findlater Content Director Hugh Sleight
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• Volume 18 issue 11 • ISSN: 1364-963 • On sale 1 October 2014 • Audit Bureau of Circulations: 77,340 (Jan-Dec 2013)
Editorial Director Mark Payton Creative Director Paul Harpin Strategy and Planning Director Bob McDowell Managing Director David Prasher Chief Executive Kevin Costello
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Storm Gathering
VXR8 GTS 6.2 Litre 585PS Supercharged V8
Official Government Test Environmental Data. Fuel consumption figures mpg (litres/ 100km) 18.5 (15.3). CO 2 emissions: 363g/km#. Model shown New VXR8 GTS 6.2i V8 (585PS) £54,499. Vauxhall does not condone irresponsible driving. #Offi cial EU-regulated test data are provided for comparison purposes and actual performance will depend on
.co.uk
and CO 2 emissions (g/km). VXR8 GTS: Urban: 12.9 (21.9), Extra-urban: 24.4 (11.6), Combined: driving style, road conditions and other non-technical factors.
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HOT FOUR #1 IT’S ABOUT TIME Apple Watch
As with other major celebrities, new iPhones can’t help a few revealing shots appearing on the internet before announcement day. But while Apple’s new blowers (of which you’ll see more in a minute) had been leaked in some detail, no-one had a clue what the Apple Watch would look like until this month. And here it is: a sapphire crystal screen that can sense the difference between a tap and a press, a Digital Crown spinner that zooms and selects different things on the screen, and a bevvy of sensors that can tell not just how you are, but who you are. Like the iPhone, it has three finishes: standard steel, aluminium and gold, all available in two sizes. Is this the beginning of the Age of Wearables, or the beginning of the Age of People Squinting Irritatedly at Their Wrists? We’ll see. As hot as… sauna time from £215 (due 2015) / apple.com/uk
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25 PAGES OF THE BIGGEST STORIES FROM PLANET TECH
WATCH YOU TALKIN’ ’BOUT? It needs your iPhone …but can relay messages, control apps and even watch through your 5, 5c, 5s, 6 or 6 Plus’s camera
It looks and feels better in real life WILL DUNN
@willydunn
Watch doctor Not only does it watch you exercise; it also knows how long you’ve spent standing up
After years of waiting, the iWatch – sorry, the Apple Watch – has at last materialised. When the iPhone landed, it wasn’t the first smartphone by a long chalk: it was just a much better smartphone. So is the Apple Watch a better smartwatch? After spending some time with a couple of early versions in Cupertino, I think it’s definitely the one to beat. It’s light and comfortable to
Sporty or posh? Click in a sporty strap for the gym, then swap it for a posh one to watch Downton Abbey
wear, it looks nice, and it has enough unique design flourishes to set it apart. The screen is bright and crisp, and words and pictures are readable from all angles. The dial, or Digital Crown, is unobtrusive in real life; it rolls easily, with very little resistance and no click. It’s a great piece of design, allowing you to move things around on screen without covering them with your clumsy prodfingers. The ‘taptic engine’, as Apple calls it, or buzzer, as
Buzz me in Street directions use haptics to steer you, so you don’t have to watch the screen while walking
we’re going to call it, is more important than you might think. There’s a very real difference between controlled haptics and a flat buzz, especially in a piece of wearable tech, and the haptics in the Apple Watch have that nuanced feel – its heartbeat-sharing delivers a softly detailed pulse.
Face look Years of research and zillions in investment, all so you can have a Mickey watch
Of course, there are a lot of unknowns here, but as with the iPhone, the Apple Watch starts with a hulking great advantage in the apps department. Lots of big brands are already signed up and making them for its platform – apps to find your car, control your smart heating or track and share your exercise. With so many people building useful software for it, it’s only going to become more attractive to the world’s 200 million iPhone owners.
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THE LINE-UP There were over ten new wristronics devices launched this past month. Here’s our pick, with three recent decents. Just so you know where we’re at…
O Asus Zenwatch An attractive Android Wear watch with mildly curved screen. It uses standard 22mm lugs, so you can put it on whatever strap you like. less than £200 / asus.com/uk
O Sony Smartwatch 3 Not idly named, the Smartwatch has 4GB of on-board Walkman, a life-tracking app and GPS plus a proper microUSB slot. €230 / sony.co.uk
O Acer Liquid Leap
O Samsung O LG Gear S G Watch R
O Garmin Vivosmart
O Moto 360
O Samsung O Pebble Gear Live Steel
It’s basic in design and functionality, but Acer is planning a very low price for the call- and textnotifying, fitnesstracking Leap. £60 approx / acer.co.uk
‘Only’ Samsung’s own Tizen OS rather than Android, but it has a full brace of sensors and its own SIM-card 3G connection. €300/ samsung.com
Looks like a fitness band, but displays notifications. It works with ANT+ heartrate sensors and can even control a VIRB action cam. £140/ garmin.com/ uk
The ‘sexiest smartwatch’, it missed out on five Stuff stars due to its battery. Will the Apple Watch pack a bigger juice-box? £200 / motorola. co.uk
Another fourstar review, but the best Android Wear watch for now. Otherwise, wait for the Apple, Asus and Sony Smartwatch 3 reviews… £170/ samsung.com
Nowt wrong with the original, but this round version might be what’s needed to take people’s eyes off the Apple Watch and Moto 360. £tba / lg.com/uk
KEY O NEW WATCHES O EXISTING
O Apple Watch
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Five-starred, the nonconformist’s choice. Support is still strong, and its battery life beats newer watches by a few days. £150/ getpebble. com
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HOT FOUR #2 DO YOU THINK I’M SIXY? Apple iPhone 6, iPhone 6 Plus
If, like us, you had already sold your iPhone 5 in anticipation of the post-Keynote value crash then, like us, you’ll be pleased that the iPhone 6 looks rather smashing and worth upgrading to. For the first time, there are two sizes to choose between: the 5.5in iPhone 6 Plus with its 1080p resolution and the 4.7in iPhone 6 with 1334x750 pixels. The difference is not just in the pixel count: iOS 8 will flip between portrait and landscape on the bigger display. We’re also excited about the ‘25% faster’ A8 processor, the impressive battery life claims and NFC, which arrives late but brings with it a swish new contactless payment system. The 8MP camera might not sound like a whole hill of megapixels, but it’s the new sensor and phase detection autofocus that matter, and the Plus also gets optical stabilisation. Lots to watch out for in our full, in-depth review, in next month’s issue. As hot as... a theatre full of sweaty geeks from £540 (SIM-free) / apple.com/uk 18
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WHAT’S REALLY NEW? R.I.P. APPLE IPOD CLASSIC (2002 – 2014)
We will NFC you now Apple hasn’t seen the point of NFC in the past, until Apple Pay arrived. Combining NFC with the fingerprint-reading Touch ID, it turns your phone into a secure tap-to-pay wallet. The only problem is that it’s currently US-only.
They’re more orientation-aware Double-tap the Plus’s Home button in Safari and the URL bar will drop down. Flip it around and you’ll get split-screen views and an extended keyboard. It’s clear that Apple has thought hard about making the jump to a bigger screen.
8 into 6 does go The Health app makes the most of the new ‘M8’ motion-sensing chip, and the 6 and 6 Plus can even tell how many stairs you’ve climbed, thanks to a mixture of motion smarts and an altitude-sensing barometer.
Yes, we cam Don’t be fooled by the basic 8MP spec: the new sensor’s upgraded with ‘focus pixels’ and phase detection autofocus. There’s a new 240fps slow-motion video mode, and the Plus’s snapper even gets optical image stabilisation.
These phones offer a taste of the new Apple WILL DUNN
@willydunn
The influence of the iPad Air is obvious in the design of the 6 and 6 Plus, and while they’re unmistakably Apple phones, there’s a sharp difference between these and the 5s. Or rather, a blunt one: where the 5s is an edgy, shiny block, these have softer rails and a matte alumi-skin. The metal body is really, really nice, and they’re so light that it actually takes a bit of getting used to: the 6 Plus felt like it might not be a real phone, although a few minutes of prodding iOS 8 and playing Monument Valley confirmed that it is. On the front, the
screens have that classic Apple superiority in terms of colour and sharpness – that bright, light, iPad Air look – but the soft rails give a very slight bulge to the screen edge. The one detail that stands out, literally, is the camera: it protrudes – only slightly, not like the Lumia 1020’s magicam – but the benefits of this little bump are immediately obvious: autofocus is superquick, snapping subjects into the clear almost instantly. The image stabilisation is also impressive, from what I could tell in a busy room. This is a new direction for Apple: gone is the dogmatic adherence to a single size
The iPod Classic peacefully passed away after a long struggle with obsolescence on 9 September in Cupertino, California. Born to Jony Ive and Steve Jobs in 2002, the iPod worked as an internationally revered digital music player, and was particularly known for its clickwheel and large capacity. The iPod Classic is survived by three children: Touch (aged 7), Nano and Shuffle (both 9).
and a rigid design for iOS. Everything from the exterior metal to the keyboards, core apps and screen rotation speaks of a more openminded approach, offering people the breadth of choice they’ve been getting from Android while adhering to Apple’s mania for quality control. Will the 6 tempt me away from my HTC One M8? Head to stuff.tv to find out. 19
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HOT FOUR #3 CHECK YOUR APP-EARANCE Moto Hint
Voice control may be the screen-free tech of the future, but it’s still embarrassing to hold your phone in front of your face and talk at it, rather than into it. And if you have to take your phone out and fire up Google Now/Siri/ Cortana to get the info you want, you might as well use your hands. Enter the Hint, a tiny earbud that listens for your custom cue-phrase (you can change “OK Google” to “Engage earputer”, “Hey Samantha” – you know, from the film Her – or anything else) and brings the wizardry of voicecontrolled computing to your ear. It’s small enough to be pretty much unnoticeable, but it could be the next big thing. As hot as... an earful of Scarlett Johanssen £tba (due 2015) / motorola.com
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HOT FOUR #4 LIVE LIFE ON THE EDGE
Samsung Galaxy Note 4, Galaxy Note Edge Android fans watched the iPhone 6 launch with bleary eyes, having only just pulled themselves back together after celebrating the arrival of both a new 5.7in Note and a clever-screened 5.6in Note Edge. Both have 2K screens, though the Edge’s extra 160-pixel curved section gives it a slightly different aspect ratio on paper. In practice, were you watching a 2K video on your phone, that curved edge would likely be used for video controls – just one of many uses, including notifications and a night clock. Both have a mighty 2.7GHz quad-core Snapdragon 805 chip and 3GB of RAM, and both have a doubly sensitive S Pen and optical image stabilisation for their 16MP cameras. The Marmite leather-back design has been refined, and the phone now has actual metal edges. Must have been quite a party. As hot as… those chilli-chocolate cocktails £tba (due October) / samsung.com/uk
MORE REASONS TO PARTY 1
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3
1 Gear VR The Note 4’s processing power and 2K screen make it powerful enough to slot into this headset and be used as a standalone VR gamer, like Oculus Rift.
2 Gear Circle Bluetooth wireless headphones that vibrate with incoming notifications or calls. When not in use, the ends clip together to make one distinctly nerdy necklace.
3 Powerbot VR9000 Just a month after Dyson revealed its robovac, Samsung has a new model. ‘CycloneForce’ tech will keep lawyers busy, and you can ‘light up’ an area for it to clean.
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Let the voice of Naim take you inside the music Mu-so is our first wireless music system. Finely tuned by our specialist engineers in England, its powerful digital brain delivers the most exceptional quality in sound, commanding 450 watts of power through six custom-designed speakers, to create an experience of music that has to be heard to be believed.
Features: Airplay, Bluetooth®/aptX®, Spotify Connect®, UPnP™ (access your stored music), Internet Radio, USB, Analogue and Digital inputs, Apple iOS and Android App for complete control. John Lewis
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Go Deeper
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FUJI GAINS WEIGHT …ALSO STAMINA, AWESOMENESS Fujifilm X30 £480 / fujifilm.eu/uk
Fujifilm claims the X30’s battery will manage around 470 pictures on one charge
Everyone’s favourite fancy compact cam, the X20, gets a slew of new features that more than justify its 50% model name increase O Say what you see. “Muscle is heavier than fat,” mutter people as they struggle to read the scales readout over their forward-mounted slab of “muscle”. But generally they’re right, and while the X30 has definitely bulked up since the X20, it’s for good reason. It now has a tilting (rather than fixed) 3in, 920k-dot LCD screen, and
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hidden within is the much larger NP-95 battery pack, as used on Fuji’s X100, which should improve battery life by a factor of two-ish. O Say what you can’t see. There’s something missing from the front of the X30 that, if spotted, will out you as a camera super-nerd. No? Why, it’s the outward end of the optical viewfinder. The inward end is present and correct because the X30 now has a 2.36MP electronic viewfinder. This should offer a metric world of improvement over the welcome, but tiny, optical eyespy that was on the X20 and X10.
O Say, what can you never see? The gubbins! But, actually, they’re largely the same: a 12MP, 2/3in X-Trans CMOS II sensor and a 28-112mm, f2.0-2.8 lens that also acts as the on/off switch. There’s a new control ring at the base of the lens and there’s also now a dedicated movie record button for those 1080p/60fps masterworks. It gets Wi-Fi, to bring it up to date with almost every other compact out there, and it also gets a new ‘Classic Chrome’ film simulation mode to help you forget that we live in the kind of future where our photos can travel invisibly through the air.
ALTERNATIVELY…
Leica MP Another new retro amazo-o-cam option. Leica promises it is ‘twice as fast’ as the original M Digital, and has a new subtle design. Slightly pricier than the X30, at £5650.
Hear the full spectrum P3 Bowers & Wilkins have been established as masters of sound engineering for almost 50 years. We are now able to bring that same expertise to the world of headphones; the same precision, the same care, the same extraordinary range and depth of detail is now available from an ultra-light, highly portable set of headphones superbly CDRHFMDCSNjSHMSNXNTQKHED
£169.99 from authorised retailers Available in Black, White. Red and Blue
Buy direct from bowers-wilkins.co.uk/P3 Two-year warranty Free delivery
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Old brand new
TECHNICS PREMIUM CLASS C700 Now, this is exciting. Technics is back. That’s the company known by most for its iconic SL1200 DJ turntables, but fondly remembered by others for its hi-fi separates and mini systems – back when graphic equaliser presets for ‘Hall’ or ‘Stadium’ were a marvel and purchase decisions were made on the basis of a crisp cassette mechanism or smoothly retracting CD tray. Fittingly, they’ve come back at the high end: a stratospherically priced Reference Class range and this slightly humbler Premium Class – still likely to be in the thousands. But it’ll be streamy, with hi-res audio, and best of all, it has little VU meter needles. Sweet. £tba / technics.com/uk
Don’t get in a stew
TEFAL COOK4ME This is a one-pot culinary wonder that cooks, browns, boils and steams, and it’s pre-loaded with 50 sweet and savoury recipes that contain a maximum of six ingredients. You just choose your dish, follow the on-screen instructions regarding the what-and-when of the ingredients and, within minutes, tuck into a tasty tagliatelle or perfect paella. If you’re a time-rich metrosexual about town, the idea might horrify you; but if you’re a busy family, this can knock up a tasty dinner for many and keep dishes warm for up to 90 minutes, or be delay-started automagically up to 15 hours in advance – so it might be like mechanical manna. £220 / lakeland.co.uk
We’re on a Dutch bender
PHILIPS 8900 Tell you what: the curved wall we’ve been working on is taking ages. And it’s taking even more plaster than it’s taking time. And then Sony announced last month that less curved is the new curved and we nearly had a heart attack. Fortunately, this month Philips has announced its first curved TV and we’re all fired up again. It’s got Ambilight, but we don’t need that because we’ve plastered a bunch of Philips Hue lights into the curv-o-wall. It’s also got micro-dimming across its 55in panel and it’s powered by Android, so you can hit the Play Store and download some tasties. But not yet: pass that palette knife, will you? £tba (due winter) / philips.co.uk
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ALTERNATIVELY… Panasonic X942 Not curved, but according to the PR this new flagship TV showcases ‘UltraLarge’ technology. It’s 85in. Not sure if ‘Ultra-Large’ has been internationally ratified.
THE ONE RE-IMAGINING WHAT’S POSSIBLE
LUMIX GH4, WITH 4K SHOOTING LUMIX GH4 is the first camera of its type to shoot true-to-life 4K Ultra HD stills and video. The most advanced camera in the LUMIX G range, it’s the one for those who demand absolute quality behind the lens,* its size freeing your creativity to imagine new possibilities. Find the LUMIX G for you at panasonic.co.uk/LumixGTheOne *GH4 available body only or with 14-140mm lens.
ds 2014
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IS THE OPTOMA WHD200? Looks stunning. I’ll take ten.
Second thoughts
RESSENCE TYPE 1 It will be as of the days of yore, when the sun rotated around the Earth and none but a blind fool would think otherwise. And then someone pointed out, really carefully, why it was folly and now we laugh at the memory. Now we are on the cusp of realising that the hands should not rotate around the dial; rather the dials should rotate around the hands. Watches should not be electronic and smart; they should be smartly mechanical. Should they need recharging, that shouldn’t begin a quest to find the little wireless charging splunkin – it should be done by simply rotating the back of the watch. Are you ready to be enlightened, people of Earth? (Do you have a few quid?) £13,000 (approx) / ressence.eu
Now don’t be sniffy. Sometimes, within the confines of relatively featureless black boxes, life-changing functionality can be found. In this case, the removal of some of those pesky HDMI cables that are snaking around your house, tripping up the maid and chewed by the dog. Previously available only in Europe but now wired up British-style, the WHD200 forms an up-to-20m wireless link between the end of two HDMI cables.
Twenty metres! At last, I can stream TV to the Wendy house. Uh, nope. See, the WHD200 deliberately uses a different frequency to that used by your Wi-Fi router and cordless phone, to reduce interference. This is clever thinking. However, the higher frequency makes the signal less capable of travelling through walls and windows. Less clever. So the most likely use, as far as we can see, is for someone who has a dual TV and projector setup. The transmitter box has two HDMI 1.4 inputs and one output, so day-to-day you can watch TV on your normal box, but wirelessly send the signal to your roof-mounted megaprojector for special occasions. Like the University Challenge quarters.
Talk to me about quality, though, because I like my Bamber Gascoigne to be sharp.
Waterproof or hi-res?
SONY NWZ-A15, NWZ-WS613 If you’re reading the issue from back to front, you’ll have noticed that Sony has launched two new phones this month. If you’re reading the issue from front to back, then watch out – there’s a spoiler above. But Sony has been busy elsewhere, too. The WS613 is a pair of standalone Walkman earpieces with upwards of 4GB on-board. They also work as a Bluetooth headset, and are waterproof. Then there’s the NWZ-A15, a hi-res Walkman that will play FLAC, AIFF, WAV and Apple Lossless files. It will also, says Sony, upscale lossy formats such as MP3 to hi-res audio quality. To which we raise an interested, sceptical, earbrow. from £170, from £130 / sony.co.uk
Few people are sharper than a Bamber, and the WHD200 shouldn’t let you down. Dispel any received notions about wireless streamers, so long as the range isn’t out: this box of delights will keep up to 1080p60 HD or 1080p24 3D just as crisply as if you were running it through big-ass HDMI cables. The signal can still carry multichannel audio, too, if you’ve got your system wired up that way – there’s a maximum system latency of 1ms that might need a little tweaking if you’re of a golden-eared persuasion.
£165 / optoma.co.uk
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The bigger picture in tech
CARPOCALYPSE NOW Jaguar flew its new XE over London this month prior to its glitzy launch, a scene that will no doubt bring to mind Wagner’s Ride Of The Valkyries. Which might be deliberate – German music for its German foes BMW, Audi and Mercedes. Or it might be an embarrassing marketing oversight. Either way, the car looks mint. Were we a small executive, this might well be the small executive car we’d choose.
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CLIP-ON NOW SCREWS-ON
Sony has expanded its range of crazy clip-on camera lenses for your smartphone. The £250 QX1 will let you screw on any E-mount digital SLR lens, while the slightly saner QX30 (also £250) is a 30x-zoom update of the previous QX10.
SELFIE-AWARE
HTC’s new mid-range 820 phone is interesting for two very different reasons. Firstly, it’s got a 64-bit octa-core Snapdragon 815 chipset, so it’s one of the first phones to be ready for the 64-bit Android L OS. Secondly, it follows the emerging trend for phones with powerful front-facing cameras: a sizzling 8MP of selfie-taking overkill.
SONOS TAKES OUT THE BRIDGE
An oft-maligned aspect of the Sonos wireless audio system is that either one of the speakers or a purpose-made Bridge needs to be hardwired into your home network. No more! A new software update makes the system totally wireless.
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The light shines from within
PENTAX K-S1 Those lights on the grip are “an innovative illumination interface system”. Effectively, the lights shine green when taking photos but turn red when shooting video. Function? Form? You decide. The camera specs are healthy: a new CMOS sensor with 20.12 effective megapixels, ultra-high ISO 51200 sensitivity, and a shutter speed of 1/6000 second. It has a 3in LCD display with an easier-to-use UI, plus if you use a Flucard For Pentax memory card, you can control it via an iOS or Android app – ideal for mounting the camera and snagging perfectly considered shots. £550 / pentax.co.uk
No more crayon styluses
WACOM BAMBOO STYLUS FINELINE You know what’s great? A stylus. It’s like being transported back to toddlerhood and being blown away that the stick in your hand can make a line appear. Whenever we get our hands on a device with a stylus, we can’t help but delightedly cry: “Daddy draw a fish!” But you know what’s not great? Any stylus with the big spudgy end designed to work on non-digitiser touchscreens, ie: an iPad. This USB-rechargeable Bluetooth Stylus Fineline from Wacom, however, has a much finer end, albeit one that works best with Wacom’s own Bamboo Paper app. “Daddy draw a dinosaur!” £50 / wacom.com
Humbly yours
LOGITECH K480 BLUETOOTH KEYBOARD What a month. There’s smartwatches and iPhones and digital cameras enough for everyone. But we’ll never lose sight of what is glorious about geekery: it doesn’t take a royal budget to feel a little joy. Look at this Logitech keyboard. It has a long slot in which you might be able to fit both a phone and tablet and it has a selector switch to hop between the pairings of either – as well as your desktop or laptop. It’s not designed to be that portable, but it will reportedly last for up to two years with just two AAA batteries. Other, more expensive gadgets might come and go, but this will sit on your desk, neatly doing its thing. And that’s to be celebrated, no? £50 / logitech.com/uk 32
Wear it. Mount it. Love it.™ GoPro App
gopro.madison.co.uk
C H O I C E
GLOBES
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All together now! We’ve got the who-ole world on our desks, we’ve got the... 1 MOVA Spinning Globe
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We all love a dramatic juxtaposition: how about a traditional globe that spins futuristically in thin air? So much less clichéd than all those Instagram pics of empty Coke cans littered around the pyramids. £150 / nauticalia.com
2 12-inch Venus Globe Face it – you won’t be part of an intergalactic colony and you’ll probably never fire a laser in space. Instead, gaze at this topological map of Venus and imagine it all happened before ‘they’ wiped your memory. £110 / 365astronomy.com
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3 SuckUK Cork Globe Impress friends with your well-travelledness by sticking pins in this corking sphere. As long as you don’t just have 20 bristling out of Marbella, that is. £100 / suck.uk.com
4 Globee San Francisco Night Light Globe Cool kids love San Fran. Cool kids sit on museum steps reading Jack Kerouac before heading to their office that looks like Tom Hanks’ apartment in Big. £16 / globee.co.uk
5 Globe On Stand You hand-wind your vintage Rolex, you use a fountain pen, and prefer to take notes in a Moleskine. Vinyl sounds better than Spotify. You like globes that look like globes did when this was all fields. £15 / notonthehighstreet.com
[ Picture RGB Digital ]
6 Maxwell’s Lunar Globe
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In days of yore, skygazers peered upon yonder moon without the aid of satellites, and ye olde lunar globes had a blank, unmapped slice where be moon dragons. £420 / globemakers.com
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3 NEW WAYS TO LOOK AT SOUND Buy a wireless Libratone ZIPP or LOOP speaker and get an additional FREE cover from our new décor color range: Apricot Red Moss Green Sandstone Yellow Buy your speaker online or from an authorised reseller and register your product at libratone.com to claim your free cover.*
FREE EXTRA COVER WITH PURCHASE
* Offer valid until 31st of October 2014
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Which adventure are you?
STARCKBIKE M.A.S.S. BY MOUSTACHE French fancifier Philippe Starck has put his pencil to four bikes with one aim: adventure. But you must have the correct bike for the terrain in which your adventure finds itself – the name stands for Mud, Asphalt, Sand, Snow. All of them are electric, thanks to bike peddlers Moustache, and they all use the slick Bosch Performance system. The Sand and Snow bikes get fat tyres, while the Snow (pictured) also has a distinctive furry cover to protect the battery from the cold. The Mud and Asphalt bikes come with more conventional tyres but top-line components. Each bike also gets themed accessories, including some frankly bonkers helmet designs. £tba / starck.com
It is, and it isn’t
NOKIA LUMIA 830 Nokia, which is actually Microsoft, has released its ‘affordable flagship’ (it’s not its actual flagship – that’s the 930, which is more powerful). But the 5in-screen 830 still has Zeiss optics and optical image stabilisation, and is flagshippy enough to get the new Lumia Denim OS update with a new mega-featured Lumia Camera app. The 830 is markedly slimmer, at just 8.5mm and 150g, making it the thinnest and lightest Lumia smartphone ever made. Nokia also launched the 4.7in 735, calling it the ‘selfie phone’ as it has a 5MP wide-angle front camera. £tba / nokia.com
Rub-a-dub-dub, 3000 books in the tub
KOBO AURA H2O This ebook reader is waterproof: you can submerge it in up to one metre of water for up to 30 minutes. Basically, you can dunk this in the bath or take it out in the worst rainstorm imaginable and it will not care the slightest bit. And the Aura H2O’s imperviousness to water isn’t the only string to its bow. Compared to its predecessor, the Aura HD, it’s lighter and thinner and its 6.8in anti-glare touchscreen is sharper. It comes with 4GB of expandable storage, a battery that’ll last up to two months and a 1GHz processor that Kobo says will make page-turning swifter. £140 / kobo.com
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DUE NOV
FIRST PLAY PROJECT CARS PS4, Xbox One, PC, Wii U Roaring its mantra ‘beyond reality’ over the noise of snarling V8 supercars, single-seaters and even karts, Project Cars wants to move hardcore motorsport sims away from PC petrolheads and bring real-life handling and physics to all platforms. Yep, even the Wii U. In its aim to be on the grid ahead of Forza and Gran Turismo, Project Cars scraps the ‘grind’ model of having to earn pots of cash in a Daewoo Matiz before you get to drive a car you actually want. This switches the emphasis away from winning
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for cash and puts it back where it should be: on competitive spirit. These are lofty targets for a company whose last race was Shift 2 (which, while pretty, somewhat missed its braking point and ran wide into console corner). But Slightly Mad Studios was also involved in the GTR series, and that’s the parent Project Cars naturally runs to. The handling is solid and progressive, and gives you enough faith to establish routine braking and turn-in points, and that combined with breathtaking depth-of-field is central to
delivering driver trust. Once the weather model comes into effect, it’s hard not to admire the puddles that form or track droplet trails on your visor, but it’s best to keep one eye on the road – handling degrades in the wet. With everything from gentle warm-up laps to 24-hour races, over 70 car licences and 80 tracks, PC support for 12K graphics (using three 4K monitors) plus Oculus Rift and Sony’s Project Morpheus, Project Cars is vying for pole on our most-wanted list. Simon Strang
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2-UP ULTIMATE PANTS-BROWNERS
SILENT HILLS PS4, PC
That picture to the left isn’t from Silent Hills. It’s from P.T. (or Playable Teaser), which you can download for your PS4 right now. It hints at the direction in which Hideo Kojima (of Metal Gear fame) and Pan’s Labyrinth director Guillermo Del Toro will take Silent Hills – and that direction is oh-my-god-I-don’t-like-it-please-turn-itoff-ARGHHHHH. Its brain-bending parallel-dimension premise sucks you into the puzzles to the point where you’re distracted enough to be easily scared. And scare you it will. More than any game you’ve ever played.
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SLENDER: THE ARRIVAL PS3, Xbox 360, PC The Slender Man is well-known on the internet for being one of the creepiest creations in horror, but until now he’s remained locked up in the relative safety of PC gaming. Reminiscent of found-footage films such as The Blair Witch Project, Slender: The Arrival has arrived on PS3 and Xbox 360 with a bump (in the night). Exploring his world, torch in hand, through the LCD screen of a camcorder, it’s really just a case of how long you can bear to play without switching the lights on.
MAKING THE JUMP TO PS4
UNTIL DAWN
Originally planned for the PS3, Until Dawn is a spiritual successor to Sega’s 1992 Mega CD game Night Trap. You have to make decisions for a group of eight friends, stranded in the middle of nowhere with a murderer on the loose. Can you hold the controller still enough to prevent giving away your hiding place to the killer?
TEARAWAY UNFOLDED
This charming cut ’n’ paste puzzle platform game from the makers of Little Big Planet was a critical hit on Vita and hopes to pull a bigger crowd when it makes the jump to its TV-tethered brother. It’s described as an ‘expanded retelling’ of the original; expect your DualShock’s touchpad and motion controls to finally be put to good use.
DAYZ
Notoriously buggy and even more notoriously difficult, survival shooter DayZ was originally a mod for PC game Arma 2. While its standalone PC version isn’t even out yet, DayZ creator Dean Hall has announced it’s coming to PS4 – though there’s no release date yet. An Xbox One version hasn’t been ruled out either.
INCOMING OCTOBER O ALIEN ISOLATION O FORZA HORIZON 2 OTHE EVIL WITHIN NOVEMBER O FAR CRY 4 O LITTLE BIG PLANET 3 O PES 2015 DECEMBER OLARA CROFT & THE TEMPLE OF OSIRIS
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Three is the magic shape
ALIENWARE AREA-51 Alienware says its ‘Triad chassis’ optimises cooling as well as access to ports and the like: you can simply pivot it forward using the built-in grips, and the sides come off for more serious tinkering. Like previous Area-51s, it will be configurable at purchase, and if money is no object you can have an octo-core Intel i7 Extreme processor, up to 32GB of RAM, a 1.5kW power supply, the latest 802.11ac Wi-Fi and as many as three full-length, double-width graphics cards. That means 4K graphics across up to three monitors – a potential resolution of 11,520x2160 pixels. Jeepers. £tba (due December) / alienware.co.uk
Z3 things of Orient are
SONY Z3, Z3 COMPACT, Z3 TABLET COMPACT A tablet and two phones walked into a bar. The bartender said to the tablet: “Oi, you can’t ring them in here.” And they all had a good laugh and sat around discussing specs for the rest of the afternoon. Like how all three – the Z3 phone, the Z3 Compact and the 8in Z3 Compact Tablet – have the ability to play hi-res audio, including Sony’s new DSEE HX that upscales MP3-quality audio to hi-res. The two phones got talking about their super-high 12800 ISO cameras, but the tablet told them to shut up and they moved on to PS4 Remote Play instead,which they all have. Inevitably though, after a few drinks, the talk turned to size differences. Doesn’t it always. £550, £430, £330 / sony.co.uk
HOT POT Hiding inside the sub are the two 150W amplifiers that drive these guys. That means they can be made pretty small: 158mm across and less than 1kg each.
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Not ‘affordable’, perfect
B&O BEOPLAY S8 We’re all on to a winner here, bless us. Within the gilded staterooms of Messrs Bang and Olufsen, they whisper about this 2.1-channel audio system as a more affordable entry to BeoPlay ownership. But once it’s laid out resplendent in our lounges, onlookers will only be amazed at the beauty of the S8 – win! – at which we can rabbit on about the work of its Danish designer Torsten Valeur. If some audiophile should feel beholden to remark on its lowly status, then we can frown disapprovingly: “In this room? I should think anything larger than a 250W Class D amplified sub and two 150W speakers would be a little unbalanced, don’t you?” (Win.) £1000 / bang-olufsen.com
Open it up in a truly massive open world. From day to night, dirt to pavement. Connect and race with friends in the most realistic – and unreal – driving game out there with more than 200 of the world’s greatest cars. Get the demo now on Xbox One.
“Visually, Forza Horizon 2 is a thing of beauty” – Trusted Reviews
“It’s hard to not marvel at the glorious graphics” – Pocket-lint
Xbox.com/Forza Features and requirements subject to change. Features vary between Xbox 360 and Xbox One version of game (each sold separately). Xbox One games for use only with Xbox One systems. Games made for Xbox 360 will not work on Xbox One. Xbox LIVE Gold membership (sold separately) required for online multiplayer; multiplayer between Xbox 360 and Xbox One not supported. On Xbox 360, some cars require download from Xbox LIVE (ISP fees apply) and a hard drive. For Xbox 360 4GB, Arcade and Core consoles (hard drive sold separately). Demo available for Xbox One only. Download from Xbox LIVE. 12GB required. ISP fees apply.
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1 CoPilot
4 Back To Bed
7 Bugmiles
from £20 / Android, iOS, Windows There are many reasons to like CoPilot’s mobile sat-nav, including its multi-platformness and its affordability. And now it’s done a free update, 9.6.2, that adds a free map update and time-savvy ActiveRoutes algorithms.
£2.49 / iOS Remember Monument? What a pleasant slice of isometric gravity-defying bimble-gaming that was. But over too soon, yes? Enter Back To Bed, in which you manipulate environments to keep a sleepwalker safe.
£free / iOS The British online social club for runners, therunningbug.co.uk, now has an app for tracking and logging your efforts. Obviously it faces a lot of competition, but if you’re already one of its 200,000 members then it’s a no-footer.
2 FishBrain
5 Tiny Tower Vegas
£free / Android, iOS Is it a happy-go-lucky social app to log your favourite fishing spots and catches? Or is it a cunning ploy by animal activists to trick Japan into posting pictures of illegal whaling activity? Either way, FishBrain now has 500,000 users.
£free / iOS Previous Tiny Tower games were pretty good. By ‘pretty good’ we mean the time we spent playing them would show up on a graph of our life activity. Now there’s a new take, in that you’re running a Vegas den. Get the thumb-splints out.
8 Assassin’s Creed Pirates
3 FaceFusion
6 Gravity Flipper
9 Cord
from £free / iOS It’s creepy enough that this game’s marketeers suggest mixing your face with that of a celebrity. But not nearly as creepy as mixing your face with that of your pet, and not nearly as ROFL-inducing. Tweet your best efforts to @stuffTV.
£free / Android “Tap to reverse gravity. Try not to die.” Not only a succinct intro for a tricksy, monochromatic, Flappy Bird-generation scroller, but also a fine concept for a film. Or maybe a difficult-to-insure replacement for Laser Tag.
£free / iOS Cord lets you share voice messages with friends or groups of friends. “We used to call it ‘conversation’,” your dad will say. Or, if he’s a geek, he’ll launch into a diatribe about the failure of Push-To-Talk phones. Either way, yawn.
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£free / iOS, Android ACP gets a new episode, entitled Cold Blood, which is set in the Arctic Sea. Brrrrr. Sorry, that wasn’t us shivering at the sight of icebergs, it was the idea of facing a new round of in-app purchase demands.
APP SPOTLIGHT VALIANT HEARTS: THE GREAT WAR
£2.99 / iOS In this centenary year, World War One things have been popping up all over the place, but one of the most heartwarming was Ubisoft’s Valiant Hearts – and now it’s available for iOS, albeit in IAP chapters. You play different characters from different aspects of the war and help them with their differing struggles.
Portable Bluetooth Speaker
PIONEER FREEME SPEAKERS ARE THE PERFECT
speakers come in a genuine leather finish, with a
CHOICE FOR PORTABLE SOUND… ALL AROUND.
choice of a Tan or black.
Small and lightweight enough to fit in your bag, the
It’s not hard to play your favourite tracks out loud, the
FREEme is the perfect music accessory to take along for
FREEme speakers have built in Bluetooth® and work
gatherings, as the smart and effective 360° circle sound
with simple NFC one touch pairing, for quick and easy
design allows listeners to sit wherever they please.
music playback. If that’s not enough, the speakers come with a built in microphone for hands free calling
Bringing style to your sound, the LF1 FREEme speakers
from the click of a button!
come with a rubberised finish and a choice of three colours; aqua blue, white and black, whilst the LF3
The Bluetooth word mark is a registered trademark owned by Bluetooth SIG, Inc. and any use of such mark by Pioneer Corporation is under license.
Begin the journey at www.pioneer.co.uk/freeme
Pioneer.electronics @PioneerUK
B E S T O F
YAMAHA …which dropped 15 products this month. We quite like these three:
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TIME FOR DAB
MORE GO THAN GLOW
SMART AND SHINY
TSX-B15D
LSX-170
R-N301
Remember the opening scene of Back To The Future as it pans slowly around a room full of clocks, all set to exactly the same time? Well, that, but with modern Bluetooth-streaming, DAB-receiving alarm clocks. A whole room of them! Roberts, Revo, Pure, Goodmans, and this one from Yamaha that looks like it’s half-sunk into the tabletop. It’s got Apt-X Bluetooth and an aux-in socket, but the bad news is that the UK website is only showing the black and white versions and not the glorious colours you see here. £120 /uk.yamaha.com
The trend for pretty lights shows no sign of passing. Whether it’s smart lightbulb sockets or cameras with LEDs built into the grip, or Kickstarted pseudoAmbilight LEDs to stick to the back of your TV, we’ll take it all. Yamaha’s latest Relit products stay blessedly clear of the garish end of this market, content to be just a mains-powered desktop speaker that just happens to have app-controllable lights on-board. Bluetooth, natch, and there’s a portable one, the LSX-70. £360 /uk.yamaha.com
We’d auction off our collection of BNIB Robosapiens to get ourselves a couple of steps up the range of Yamaha A-S high-design hi-fi separates. This isn’t even really an A-S product, but it’s got that kind of Japanese Bauhaus aesthetic – and that ‘N’ in the name refers to ‘Network’, this being one of Yamaha’s connected amps. DLNA, Spotify streaming and dedicated app control are all on-board, along with the good old stuff like a phono stage and buttons that go ‘clunk’. £260 /uk.yamaha.com
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Get your own back
MOTOROLA MOTO X The Moto X won’t win any spec wars. No world firsts or gimmicks either. But Motorola’s new flagship smartphone will wiggle its way into your shortlist anyway. How? With a gorgeous new 5.2in Full HD display, a 13MP camera with a ring flash and – lest we forget – even more customisation than last year’s X. The front is either black or white, but you can choose from 25 different materials for the rear, including real leathers and woods. You also get ten choices of accent colour and the option to engrave a name or message on the back. All for a score over £400 – it’s definitely worth a look. £420 / motorola.com
Be king of the swingers
SONY SMART TENNIS SENSOR They say the CIA can reconstruct your conversations using an office object, turning vibrations into a waveform of you slagging off your manager. Knowing this makes a sensor that only tells you that you hit a ball seem underwhelming. Until you learn it can measure where on the strings you hit the ball, along with swing and ball speed. It knows its forehand smash from its backhand slice, and all the stats can either be saved or viewed in real time via an Android or iOS app. US$200 / sony.co.uk
A smorgasbord of in-car tech
VOLVO XC90 Volvo’s new XC90 is the figurehead of its refreshed, hi-tech and still Swedish design direction. Those fancy LEDs and the simplified front grille, for example, plus the hybrid 60g/km CO2 engine. But let’s go inside: the dashboard has a new tablet-like Sensus infotainment system that supports Apple CarPlay and Android Auto with Nuance-powered voice recognition. There’s a 19-speaker Bowers & Wilkins sound system and, should you be distracted by it, there’s a brace of sensors and radar working to avoid peds and cyclists as well as other cars. Makes a Range Rover look like an over-priced tractor, doesn’t it? £tba / volvocars.com
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ONE, TWO, BUCKLE MY CAMERAROO Casio Exilim EX-FR10 ¥50,000 (approx £290) / casio.com
This ain’t no two-bit, me-too action camera. Oh, wait, it is two-bit. As in two bits… O Having it all Ask anyone – the world is full of haves and have-nots. Take the GoPro HD Hero: surprisingly, it’s a have-not, because it has no built-in screen. Don’t be sad, it’s also a squillionaire. Now look at Garmin’s VIRB, a new(ish) ‘have’ with a fancy colour screen. Oooh. O Best of both worlds Now let’s look at this Casio – you can stop looking at the other two, they’re not going anywhere. The EX-FR10 manages to be that rarest of things, a have and a have-not. Its 2in 230k-dot screen, which can sit in line with the lens or be folded around the back, can also be removed and used via Bluetooth as a waterproof remote control. It’ll hold an image up to five metres from the lens, but continue to act as a shutter button 10m away. O Screen there, done that But now the waters will be muddied by someone pointing out that, while the GoPro ‘have-not’ got a screen, it ‘have’ the ability to connect to your phone. Quite right: it is by hook and by crook both a have and a have-not. To which we reply: so is the Casio, thanks to a free Exilim app. O Specs appeal But is it actually better, this Casio? It has a 21mm equivalent focal length, with an f/2.8 aperture. A 1/2.3in CMOS sensor records 14MP stills and 1080p video to microSD cards and Casio says its battery will last 75 minutes of action shooting. But action cams can’t be judged on specs alone. It’s only out in the mud and the mire, the sand and the surf, that they show their true colours. So we’ll endeavour to do just that, the minute the EX-FR10 makes its way over from Japan.
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A detachable, Bluetooth-linked screen saves your phone’s battery life
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PURE JONGO X SERIES The Jongo system isn’t shiny and new like Denon HEOS, but the ‘X’ marks a refresh. There’s the coolly refreshing ice-coloured speaker grille on the white speakers, but more refreshing still are the tweaks they’ve been given by the boffins in Pure’s R&D department. The setup process has been simplified, and thanks to Pure’s Caskeid technology the whole Jongo system can now intelligently pick up on what you were last playing and resume it when you’re back in the room. As multiroom systems go, Pure continues to win the value-for-money gong. from £100 / pure.com
START MENU Thumbing a lift
ULTRASONIC LEVITATION MACHINE
Level best
DENON HEOS Heos, the Greek god of wireless multiroom audio, has sided with Denon to create a set-up that’s aimed squarely at (and slightly pricier than) Sonos. There are three types, with increasingly sophisticated speaker set-ups but the same connectivity: Wi-Fi, Ethernet or aux-in, with an iOS/Android app in control. The ‘3’ stands horizontally or vertically, the ‘5’ and ‘7’ on their longer edge. There’s also the HEOS Amp and the Link, with line-level outputs for your own amp, while the Extend creates a bridge connection for the further reaches of your mansion. from £250 / denon.co.uk
The month’s best concepts, start-ups, crowdfunded projects and plain crazy ideas
Fade to great
OPENMIX
Action stations
POWERPOLE
US$120 / soniclevitation.com One for you science-o-philes, this kit contains all the bits you need to levitate light objects using soundwaves. An amusing enough diversion for a wet weekend, but it forms the basis of a theory that could lead to perpetual motion, the resultant destruction of the energy industry and the demise of the human race as we know it. Maybe.
£35 / myopenmix.com This dinky little device has two 3.5mm inputs and one output, so it will let you crossfade tracks between two devices, with the resultant noise heading straight to your hi-fi or PA system. Doesn’t have to be two songs you’re mixing, either. You could have one phone with music on and another with one of the many DJ effects apps out there.
US$130 / polarprofilters.com Some people think like dogs. See, most people look at a GoPro on a stick and think about the footage. People who think like dogs look at a GoPro on a stick and think about the stick. That’s exactly what the guys (or possibly dogs) at Polar Pro did, and that’s when they thought about filling the stick with batteries to make your GoPro (and other gadgets) last longer. Clever boy.
Status Seeking funding (Kickstarter)
Status Funded (Kickstarter)
Status Funded (Kickstarter) 47
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OUR MONTH What the past 30 days have brought us by way of geekery
I GOT A LITTLE SMITTEN…
I SAW A MOTO 360 EXPLODE…
…OK, it had already exploded/been carefully dismantled with all its custom circular parts on display. I snuck behind the scenes at Motorola’s new Chicago HQ to see the squares and squircles it rejected before striking design gold with the 360.
I LISTENED TO MUSIC LIKE AN OLIGARCH…
…on Vertu’s £490 new V headphones. They even smell exclusive, wrapped in hand-stitched lamb’s leather. And they sound great, as you might expect with the design assisted by B&O. You’d swear Cliff was in the room.
Sophia Charara reviewer / 360° viewer
The deep guttural roar of its electric engine was so brutal and enticing that I just had to pop the hood and check what was under it. Turned out to be quite a surprise. Watch the vine here: bit.ly/stufftesla
…with the detailed map of London’s train lines at carto.metro.free.fr – there were undoubtedly better things I could have been doing than figuring out how many platforms of how many stations I had been to.
I RODE A 116MPH LAWNMOWER…
…and I didn’t ‘do a Hammond’. Honda invited me to Donington Park for a go on its record-breaking grass-cutter and, while I may not quite have earned a spot in Guinness’s book, you can read all about my ride on stuff.tv
Fraser Macdonald consulting editor / station spotter Ross Presly deputy art editor / confused greaser
Stephen Graves stuff.tv deputy ed / easy listener 48
I DIDN’T REALISE THE TESLA WAS SO LOUD
I COOKED UP A PLAYLIST…
…quite literally, with the brilliant Biolite CampStove. Its ability to convert twig-based fire into electricity meant it simultaneously cooked my pasta and powered my campfire songs during a trip to Snowdonia. Even the sheep were impressed.
Tom Wiggins deputy editor / lawnmower man Mark Wilson features editor / caveman 2.0
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Upcoming cultural highlights: collect all six and win a prize! But without the prize
03 HAYFEST Hayfield, Derbyshire
Either the last hurrah of summer or the first, more building-based festival of winter, depending on your circumstances. Either way, this civilised riot of music and beer (including Andy Fairweather Low, above) should be a laid-back delight.
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20 MARVEL’S AGENTS OF S.H.I.E.L.D. SEASON 1
Perhaps you were never in during the show’s airings, or maybe your Sky+ box was faulty, or perhaps you didn’t watch it on 4oD. Whatever, now you can buy this on DVD and Blu-ray and perhaps get it all down you before Season 2 begins.
21 THE ABYSS BEYOND DREAMS
Peter F Hamilton “O, for the wings of a dove!” sang someone, striking fear into doves everywhere. Here, though, it’s more: “O, for 750 pages of the first book in a new series by a British sci-fi superstar!”
27 GODZILLA
Not monstery enough! Too monstery! All the possible accusations were flung at acclaimed British director Gareth Edwards’ Next Big Project. Now we can watch it again at home – getting the surround speakers out – and see if we were just a bit over-excited.
30 THE TELEGRAPH SKI AND SNOWBOARD SHOW Ignore the fact that you haven’t booked a snowsports holiday yet and instead focus on spending a whole wodge on the latest gear. This show at Earl’s Court 2 is just the place to do it.
31 SUNSET OVERDRIVE
No need to buy a Halloween costume, because you’ll not be going anywhere. As long as you clicked ‘release day delivery’ on your Sunset Overdrive order, you’ll be melting your brain with technicolour third-person craziness.
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WIN A NIKON D5300 SLR KIT & NIKKOR 18-300MM LENS WORTH OVER £1500 It’s not so long ago that, having taken the only ever pictures of an actual living pixie on your SLR, you’d be in a race to the nearest Snappy Snaps to get the film developed and posted off in time to meet that week’s Practical Pixie print deadline. Then everything went digital, and your only worry was finding the right USB cable to get the photos onto your PC. And then came Wi-Fi cameras, letting you upload pictures directly to your smartphone… and if you were an actual living pixie, the one you’d choose to be captured with is the Nikon D5300 (RRP £680). Offering built-in Wi-Fi plus GPS, the D5300 is a 24.2MP digital SLR with powerful low-light performance and vari-angle monitor, and comes with an 18-55mm VRII lens. Add a top-quality zoom to the package – such as Nikon’s AF-S DX Nikkor 18-300mm f/3.5-6.3G ED VR, worth £850 – and you’ve no excuse for not getting those tiny pixie wings pin-sharp.
HOW TO ENTER
For a chance to win this £1500-plus bundle of instantly connected SLR swankiness, just go to stuff.tv/win and answer the following question:
WHICH OF THESE IS A FEATURE OF THE NIKON D5300? A … Built-in Wi-Fi B … Built-in tie-dye C … Built-in kitchen cupboards, including a handy cutlery drawer
HURRY!
COMPETITION CLOSES 12 NOVEMBER 2014
Find out more at nikon.co.uk Terms & conditions 1 Open to UK residents aged 18 or over. 2 Entries close: 11.59pm on 12 November 2014. 3 Prize is as stated. 4 Prizes are non-transferable. 5 Only one entry per person. 6 For full Haymarket terms and conditions see: www.stuff.tv/legal Promoter: Haymarket Media Group, Teddington, Middlesex TW11 9BE
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INNOVATORS
With a little help from our friends… Sometimes it’s nice to get a fresh viewpoint, so we asked our friends at Dezeen and NME to give us their thoughts on our Innovators. Keep an eye out for them.
STUFF INNOVATORS 2014
SUPERHEROES OF TECH They range from VR revolutionaries to vinyl pioneers, and they’ve given us everything from hoverbikes to robot servants. It’s time to meet the Stuff Innovators of 2014: our pick of the geniuses who are going beyond ordinary geekdom to remake the modern world [ Illustrations Rich Kelly ]
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INNOVATORS
LIFE
Here to help Jibo can’t pour you drinks but you can get it to remind you to buy more gin when you finish the bottle.
Beady eyes Jibo also has two cameras, so make sure you cover your mouth if you’re plotting to shut it down, HAL-style.
Creating helpful and sociable robots CYNTHIA BREAZEAL MIT’S PERSONAL ROBOTS GROUP “The day I started my doctorate at Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” Breazeal tells us, “was the same day NASA landed the Sojourner robot on Mars. I knew we were sending robots into oceans and volcanoes and space, but where were they in the human environment?” In looking for
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the answer, she created a field called social robotics, and it’s one she says will bring about the next big tech revolution. “Computers used to be very expensive, and only a few specially trained people knew how to use them, until someone asked: ‘What would it mean to have one of these on
every desk, in every home?’” The robotic answer, says Breazeal, is Jibo. “Robots are so different to all the slabs and boxes we use today. They experience the world around us, and they push all kinds of psychological buttons in us. At MIT, we’ve found again and again that people are more successful at achieving their goals when they’re using a robot rather than a screen.” Jibo, she believes, “will connect you and co-ordinate you in your family life. It’s like having someone helping you,
rather than having a tool that you use. Your smartphone is a camera – Jibo is a cameraman. It’s not an individual device, it’s a family hub. It’s a new kind of assistant. It doesn’t need to be able to pick things up, or walk up and down stairs – it’s a humanised interface for all your other personal technologies. It’s logical – it’s what happens beyond screens.” It seems the internet agrees: at the time of printing, Jibo’s Indiegogo campaign had met its goal 20 times over. Look out for this little guy (and his inventor) in December 2015.
INNOVATORS
Bringing a touch of sci-fi to your daily routine
Making photographs come alive
Protecting cyclists on the road after dark
Banishing tweeting fridges to smart home obscurity
CORTANA WINDOWS PHONE Sometimes it feels like the world could do with a real-life version of Halo’s Master Chief, but for now the closest we’re going to get is Cortana. Named after and voiced by John-117’s ever-present AI helper from the multi-millionselling Xbox games, Cortana is Windows Phone’s answer to Siri or Google Now – with a little extra added on top. As well as simple web searches and most standard phone functions, Cortana can attach reminders to other actions, so next time you go to phone your mum Cortana will nudge you to politely ask about the cat. Over time she’ll learn more about you, adding details to a ‘notebook’ full of your vitals that she’ll use to offer more targeted help. With the Xbox One and Windows 8 (or 9) the obvious next steps for Cortana, expect to hear her voice a lot more in the future.
REN NG LYTRO ILLUM It’s one thing to build a new camera, but Ren and his team at Lytro are after a more ambitious prize: a new kind of photography. Since the early 19th century, every photograph has been a flat, passive print. Lytro pictures are not meant to be printed – they’re active digital images that you can refocus or change the perspective of while you’re viewing them. The engineering that has gone into the Illum is fiendishly complex – that large, versatile 30-250mm f/2 lens contains thousands of microlenses that capture not just light, but which direction the light’s coming from, allowing the processor to build an image in a process called ‘computational photography’ (a phrase that makes you 8% more of a geek just by saying it). It’s early days for Lytro, but this could be the most important camera since the Box Brownie.
EMILY BROOKE BLAZE LASERLIGHT As role models go, Batman isn’t a bad one. As far as we know, Emily Brooke of Blaze doesn’t dress up in a cape in the evenings and take to the streets of London to fight crime, but she has mimicked the Dark Knight’s bat signal for the Laserlight. It looks pretty much like any other bike light – albeit one encased in aluminium – but turn it on and it also projects a laser onto the road five metres in front of your bike, forming a green bicycle shape instead of Batman’s logo. As 79% of collisions with cars occur when a driver turns across an unseen cyclist, the Laserlight increases their visibility. The battery’s smart too. It won’t turn on unless it’s in the special bracket, and when it’s nearly dead it’ll switch to a low-energy mode that lasts four hours, so you’ll never be stranded miles from home without lights.
TONY FADELL NEST Fadell took one of the most under-exploited domestic products – the thermostat – and made it exciting (and himself rich in the process). He now promises to do the same with other household gadgets, leaving designers kicking themselves for not thinking of it first. Entrepreneur Fadell made his name at Apple, where he was a key member of the team that developed the iPod. He later founded Nest Labs with the somewhat unlikely aim of doing for thermostats and smoke detectors what the MP3 player did for music. Nest’s products are easy to use and remember your preferences, turning the heating down when you’re not at home and learning how long it takes to reach your preferred temperature, so it can then turn it up again when you’re on your way back, thereby saving money on fuel bills. Marcus Fairs, DEZEEN
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INNOVATORS
LIFE CONT. Wristy business There are extra faces for the 360 on Google Play, including one that looks like 007’s watch in GoldenEye
Reinventing the smartwatch JIM WICKS MOTOROLA
READ THE REVIEW P72
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On the, er, face of it, making a watch round doesn’t seem that revolutionary. But when Motorola unveiled its circular Moto 360 it was distinct in a world of square-faced smartwatches, all informed by the phones they were designed to work with, rather than the timekeepers they were replacing. But Moto’s first Android Wear device took the opposite approach. Lead designer Jim Wicks said: “Time has always been represented by a circle, from the sundial to the pocket watch, and 85% of watches sold in the world are round; we didn’t want to make consumers change for this tech.” The Moto 360 has proved that smartwatches can be beautiful, sharing equal amounts of DNA with high-end timepieces as well as the phone in your pocket. And it’s still only generation one…
Teaching the whole world how to code
Solving the need for constant charging
Saving the world one solar panel at a time
Making 3D printing affordable enough for the home
KATHRYN PARSONS DECODED If you want to be megarich these days there’s no point in trying to become a rock star – you’re better off learning how to code and writing something to sell to Facebook for US$400bn. Kathryn Parsons’ Decoded can help you with the first bit, running courses to teach you all you need to know in a single day. It’s too bad there’s no equivalent course to deal with the second bit, really.
HATEM ZEINE COTA BY OSSIA In a few years’ time, your gadgets won’t need to plug into the wall. They’ll get their energy like they get their information – from a wireless router. In cafes and libraries and train stations, Hatem Zeine’s crafty Cota boxes will feed power through the air to any gadget within range, and your battery will never run out. Well, until you go camping, but hotels are much nicer anyway.
AGAMEMNON OTERO REPOWERING LONDON Aside from blowing ourselves up or being trampled on by a planet-sized space puppy, the biggest threat to Earth is climate change. Repowering London wants to get local communities using renewable energy sources so they can limit their impact on the environment. Either that or they want to develop a new kind of solar-powered weapon to ward off that intergalactic canine menace. One or the other.
STEVE SCHELL NEW MATTER In an attempt to actually make 3D printing mainstream, Steve Schell and New Matter have created the Mod-T, a US$280 Wi-Fi 3D printer. The Wi-Fi’s there so you can access and operate it easily from a browser or phone, but the real strength is the cost. At that price, it’s within reach of almost anyone who fancies messing about with micro-manufacturing while they catch up on EastEnders.
INNOVATORS
Look around you Dyson’s 360 Eye travelled 1080km during testing on a rolling road – that’s a lot of crumbs
Supporting student engineers SIR JAMES DYSON DYSON Most of the robots being developed around the world are not the kind of robots you’d want to share a lounge with. They’re often a bit big, and some of them are a bit military. Thankfully, Britain’s most inventive billionaire is also a keen supporter of student and startup engineers, and he recently announced that Dyson is funding a new lab at Imperial College where a more obliging species of robot will be created. Like Dyson’s new 360 Eye robo-vac, they’ll have sophisticated robo-vision that will allow them to accomplish tasks like doing the laundry or clearing the table without getting in your way. Of course, a future in which you’re waited upon by electric slaves won’t come without the occasional robot uprising, but as long as they’ve done their chores first, that’s fine.
Creating the chip to end all chips
Invading your house with sensor ninjas
Printing your way to prettiness
Breaking crowdfunding records
SIR HOSSEIN YASSAIE IMAGINATION TECHNOLOGIES You might not have heard of The Hossmeister, as we like to call him, but this British engineer has had a hand in most gadgets you’ve ever bought. If you’ve ever used a smartphone, tablet, console, DAB or TV (you have), you’ve used Imagination’s chips. His latest trick is Caskeid – wireless tech that can create Sonos-style multiroom systems from devices made by different manufacturers. Neat.
DANIEL FRIEDMAN NINJA BLOCKS There are a number of companies vying to pack your home with sensors, but Ninja Blocks has the nattiest gear so far: the Ninjasphere. This alien-looking swoop of tech is the brain for your smarthome, and can automate heating and lighting, save power, keep an eye on security and even – thank you, sweet ninja-thing – tell you where your car keys are.
GRACE CHOI MINK MAKEUP PRINTER Mink is a different, and possibly more useful, kind of 3D printer: it prints makeup. By giving you the freedom to print any colour you find on the internet and cutting out the giant global brands that make a fortune selling the same stuff in a slightly different tube, Mink could save you money and make your face look nice. For non-makeup-wearers, try the BurritoBot (seriously, it does exist).
ERIC MIGICOVSKY PEBBLE In 2008, when the first 3G iPhone was a newborn, Eric Migicovsky was already designing the wearable. By chopping some bits out of a Nokia 3300 and soldering them to an Arduino, he created a low-power smartwatch that allowed him to receive messages and updates while cycling to college. Four years later, his consumer version – the Pebble – smashed every Kickstarter record.
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INNOVATORS
DESIGN Health and tasty Withings’ Activité is proof that activity trackers don’t have to make you look like you’re on parole
Putting the luxury into life-tracking FRÉDÉRIC LINTZ WITHINGS Many people consider their watch to be an item of jewellery rather than an extension of their phone. With its elegantly minimal analogue face, Activité is the first truly beautiful smartwatch and proves that advanced tech and hand-tooled leather straps are not mutually exclusive. The product was designed by Frédéric Lintz of French designers Eliumstudio for Withings, which makes a range of activity, sleep and health-monitoring products. Like other trackers, the watch measures steps, calories, distance and sleep patterns; but rather than the usual Star Trek aesthetic, the Swiss-made Activité features a classic stainless steel face with pared-down hands and hour markings. A second, smaller analogue dial discreetly displays progress towards your goal – pretty retro in comparison to gaudier animations. Marcus Fairs, DEZEEN
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Inventing the modular smartphone
Driving our road networks into the future
Inventing a new way to interact with technology
Creating a leaf that could take us all the way to Mars
DAVE HAKKENS PHONEBLOKS Dave Hakkens has shown how a good idea combined with strong networking skills can make big waves without any investment. He created his concept for a modular mobile phone in 2013. Before he’d even graduated, it had 16 million views on YouTube and led to collaboration with Motorola’s Project Ara, which aims to develop an open-source hardware platform for smartphones. Marcus Fairs, DEZEEN
DAAN ROOSEGAARDE SMART HIGHWAY While Marty McFly’s future didn’t require roads, ours will – but they won’t look like the potholed spine-rattlers you’re used to driving down. Daan Roosegaarde has designed a new road network with glowing markings, lanes designated for electric cars, and paint that responds to the weather conditions to warn drivers if it’s likely to be icy. With roads like that, Marty might just change his mind.
HIROSHI ISHII TRANSFORM Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor Hiroshi Ishii is responsible for Transform – a 21st-century version of one of those Pin Art toys you saw in The Gadget Shop in the ’90s. The difference is this one can render the physical form of something digital, or recreate the shape of an item scanned with a Kinect sensor, so you can effectively send physical objects over the internet.
JULIAN MELCHIORRI THE SILK LEAF Now we’re not saying astronauts will ride the Silk Leaf into outer space, but it could hold the key to long-distance space travel. Melchiorri has managed to suspend chloroplasts (the bits of a leaf that turn the sun’s energy into oxygen) in hardy synthetic foliage that could survive space and theoretically provide breathable air above the range of standard storage tanks. To infinity…
INNOVATORS
WATCH, LISTEN, PLAY On me ’ead Alongside the headset, the DK2 comes with a separate camera for positional head tracking.
A fresh perspective The DK2 offers 960x1080 pixels per eye with reduced latency to prevent VR sickness
Ready, aim, fire! EVE: Valkyrie allows you to use Oculus Rift to aim your weapons, just like an Apache gunship
Leading the VR revolution PALMER LUCKEY OCULUS When most teenagers lock themselves away in their parents’ garage, they’re normally guzzling illicit booze and fags, not working on the prototype of a device that’ll eventually convince Mark Zuckerberg to part with US$2 billion. But Palmer Luckey wasn’t like most teenagers,
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experimenting with Tesla coils and lasers in his spare time. Now 22, he’s founder of Oculus and inventor of the Rift, making him almost single-handedly responsible for the resurgence of virtual reality. Since the Rift was unveiled in 2012 we’ve seen headsets from PlayStation, Samsung, LG
and a whole raft of start-ups, but Luckey welcomes the competition: “It lets people know that VR isn’t just this thing that one crazy company believes in,” he told Stuff at this year’s E3 gaming show. “It’s something that a lot of companies, even really big ones, believe in.” That includes Facebook, Oculus’ new owner. And while some of the company’s early backers felt betrayed by this ‘selling out’ it’s only thanks to the deal that Oculus will be able to sell the Rift at cost price when it eventually goes on
general sale. It’ll also be smaller and lighter than the DK2, with a wider field of view, higher frame rate and more pixels crammed into the display. This is only the beginning. Luckey sees a future beyond gaming for virtual reality: “I think that VR has the capability to replace almost all the screens we use on a daily basis. Let’s go way into the future and imagine it’s built into something that just looks like a normal pair of glasses. Why would you have a phone instead of that?” Why indeed, Mr Luckey.
Creating a game the size of the universe
Bringing technology to live performance
Taking virtual reality to the multiplex
Breathing humanity into CGI
SEAN MURRAY HELLO GAMES One minute Sean Murray’s Hello Games was the tiny studio that created cartoon stuntman Joe Danger; the next it was showing off a space exploration game with an infinitely expanding collection of procedurally generated planets (with dinosaurs). That means every planet you land on in No Man’s Sky is unique, experiencing its own Big Bang that dictates what everything from the weather to the wildlife will be like for people who land there. Whatever you do on that planet will affect the experience of it for other players, although the universe is so massive you’re unlikely to ever encounter another human explorer. Instead No Man’s Sky is about being a bona-fide adventurer and discovering worlds never seen before. With game development, Sean Murray’s doing exactly the same.
IMOGEN HEAP THE GLOVES London’s Imogen Heap rose to prominence in 2005 as the sort of popstress you’d hear as the credits rolled on a TV teen drama, later scoring an international smash with croony torch song What You Say. Another Dido, the music press chimed at once, dismissively. Not so, thanks to Heap’s cutting-edge development of music ware. In 2011, she debuted a pair of gloves that use in-built MIDI controllers remotely linked up to keyboards and synths to allow her to create soundscapes dictated by her hand gestures. It’s the sort of thing seen in experimental electronica communities – Bristol sound artist Shitmat was known for taping Nintendo Wii controllers to his hands for a similar use before retiring in 2012 – but Heap is dragging this technology thrillingly into the mainstream. Al Horner, NME
TOM ANNAU JAUNT If you think virtual reality is just about gaming, stick your head inside an Oculus Rift and let Jaunt show you otherwise. Tom Annau is just one of three founders of the cinematic VR company but it was his trip to Zion National Park in Utah that inspired the idea of headset escapism. Filmed with special camera arrays that provide a dome of footage around your head, Jaunt’s more-than-360º movies aren’t just for virtual tourism: movie directors are already investigating ways to use VR to put you right inside their story. Allowing the viewer to look around inside a scene means fundamental changes to the way films are made, and with people from Dolby, Sky, IMAX and 20th Century Fox on the board at Jaunt it won’t be long before you’re picking up a VR headset at the pictures to go with your popcorn, pick ’n’ mix and large Coke.
ANDY SERKIS THE IMAGINARIUM For a man who’s had lead roles in films as big as The Lord Of The Rings, King Kong and the recent Planet Of The Apes reboot, the real Andy Serkis spends very little time on screen. Whenever he appears it’s as a computergenerated primate or jewellery-obsessed goblin with a combover. Serkis is an actor who doesn’t just inhabit other characters but becomes entirely different species, and, thanks to his world-leading motion capture studio The Imaginarium, he’s pushing it to places cinema has never been before. With each performance, Serkis adds another level of something that’s been missing from CGI-heavy films for so long: humanity. It’s got to the point that he’s being tipped for an Oscar for his portrayal of chief ape Caesar. He’ll also have a not-yet-named role in JJ Abrams’ Star Wars movie.
[ 20th Century Fox-Chernin Entertainment 2014 ]
INNOVATORS
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INNOVATORS
WATCH, LISTEN, PLAY CONT.
Making vinyl essential for music lovers (again) JACK WHITE LAZARETTO ULTRA LP There are probably tribesmen in the Amazon more au fait with modern tech than Jack White, who swears by analogue recording techniques, has performed to a backdrop of ’50s tellies and once decried anything with a computer chip in it to be a “destroyer of emotion and truth”. Presumably he goes on tour in a horse-drawn cart. Anyways, all this is not to say the former White Stripe isn’t still breaking new ground. This year’s Lazaretto became the biggest-selling vinyl in 20 years thanks to wax savants who turned the ‘Ultra’ version of the record into a sort of grouchy blues Rubik’s Cube of discovery. Play the record at different RPMs and you’ll unearth hidden songs. Strip back the LP’s centre labels and you’ll find further surprises too. Al Horner, NME
White noise Who says only CDs can have secret tracks? JW’s Ultra LP is stuffed with things to discover
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Leading the Netflix revolution
Teaching tech to go along to a new tune
Adding imagination to mobile games
Transforming the first-person gaming experience
KEVIN SPACEY HOUSE OF CARDS Kevin Spacey’s political drama isn’t just approved by Barack Obama; it’s been instrumental in changing the way we watch TV. The first A-lister to throw his weight behind internet-only TV, Spacey proved with his House Of Cards remake that the most exciting new shows weren’t necessarily on primetime TV. With Netflix also showcasing 4K, it looks as if Frank’s success was just the beginning.
ROLAND LAMB ROLI The musical keyboard hasn’t changed for centuries, even though the tech has evolved spectacularly since the time of felt-covered hammers hitting strings. Then Roland Lamb created a spongy, pressure-sensitive keyboard that responds to gestures, letting you alter pitch and timbre with your fingers. It’s at the front of a movement turning once-dumb boxes into extensions of the body. Marcus Fairs, DEZEEN
SIMON FLESSER & MAGNUS ‘GORDON’ GARDEBÄCK SIMOGO Mobile games don’t need to be mindless money-makers with a lifespan shorter than a suicidal mayfly. Simogo’s CV includes Year Walk and Device 6 – two games that are about as far removed from Flappy Bird as you get – with the latter in particular using the movement of your iThing to tell the story. Expect similarly smart narrative tricks from the team’s next game, The Sailor’s Dream.
ALISTAIR HOPE THE CREATIVE ASSEMBLY The thing about first-person shooters is you normally spend all your time shooting stuff. But Alien Isolation isn’t like most first-person shooters. The game’s creative lead Alistair Hope, er, hopes to breathe new life into the largely stale genre by shifting the focus to xenomorph-fuelled tension, rather than carefree fragging. The alien’s clever, too. It adapts its strategies after each encounter…
INNOVATO ORS
Telling a compelling story within a game NEIL DRUCKMANN NAUGHTY DOG If anyone tells you games can’t tell proper stories, sit them down in front of a PS4 and fire up The Last Of Us Remastered. Naughty Dog’s Neil Druckmann wrote it, and in a world where the zombie apocalypse has become something of a cliché, his story of two survivors – one of whom may hold the key to a cure – is as fresh as a new bite wound. It’s more 28 Days Later than Resident Evil: Extinction, with the relationship between Joel and Ellie just as important as the body count, plus there are secondary narratives hidden throughout if you take the time to look for them and piece the bits together. With Druckmann now turning his pen to next-gen debut Uncharted 4: A Thief’s End (due 2015), Naughty Dog’s future – and that of gaming in general – looks anything but apocalyptic.
Gunishment Joel and Ellie’s story was about way more than just how many infected they could kill
Building a human-sized joystick
Creating the YouTube of new music
Giving us VR everywhere and anywhere
Making blockbusters great again
JAMES ILIFF SURVIOS What does the joystick of the future look like? Well, a bit like you. As a graduate of the same school as Palmer Luckey, Survios founder James Iliff has created an as-yet-unfinished wearable controller that allows you to navigate a VR game simply by walking around within the system’s magnetic field, with specific actions such as gun-toting and zombie-hacking dealt with by Wii-style controllers.
ALEX LJUNG & ERIC WAHLFORSS SOUNDCLOUD It’s obvious when you think about it, but only Alex Ljung and Eric Wahlforss did anything about it: a website, app and social network for musicians to upload their tunes to without a shady record label exec in sight. Nowadays it’s used by the whole industry to give sneak previews, by young hopefuls to showcase what they can do, and by the rest of us to listen to music for free.
ED MASON GAMEFACE LABS What people often forget about virtual reality is that you need to tether your chosen headset to a fairly rip-snorting PC. Ed Mason’s GameFace crams everything into one face-mounted unit, including a 2.5K display, Android OS and Tegra K1 graphics processor that you wouldn’t even find in the latest phones. The dream of playing VR Bus Driver on the top deck of the 155 takes another step towards reality.
GARETH EDWARDS GODZILLA With Michael Bay doing his best to lobotomise the blockbuster once and for all, Gareth Edwards has shown that action movies don’t need to be idiotic. After making Monsters on a shoestring, his Godzilla reboot was a superbly pitched rescue mission of the legendary beast’s reputation, earning him the opportunity to make a sequel. Perhaps the new Star Wars won’t be so bad.
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INNOVATORS
HEALTH Talk of the town The Valour builds its own social network with other bikes to share real-time info on road conditions
Creating the cleverest bicycle ever ALI ZAHID VANHAWKS The humble push bike hasn’t changed that much in the past 150 years. Sure, the materials used to make them have evolved and the gearing and brakes are more advanced, but the basic shape has barely changed since the Boneshaker of 1869 – Vanhawks’ Valour even uses the same template. Beneath the surface, however, it’s a completely different beast. Powered by your smartphone (and your feet), Vanhawks has given the Valour turn-by-turn navigation (indicated by lights on the handlebars), sensors that detect stuff in your blind spot (and alert you using vibrations) and an accompanying app that collects Strava-style data on your ride. If it gets nicked it’ll even tell other Valours nearby so its owner can find out its whereabouts (at US$1250, it’s eminently nickable). Not bad for 150 years of progress. Can you make one that hovers next?
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Designing the products everyone else copies
Making earphones that listen to you too
Coming up with apps that trick you into exercise
Improving mental health with a game
JONY IVE APPLE The most influential product designer on the planet got more influential still when he took over Apple’s software division. iOS 7 finally brought Apple’s software into line with its clinically elegant hardware; iOS 8 pushes the design envelope even further and integrates Healthbook. With the industrial designer Marc Newson joining his design team, we can only guess what Ive will do next. Marcus Fairs, DEZEEN
NIKOLAJ HVIID THE DASH Most earphones only require you to do the listening, not the other way around. But Bragi’s The Dash in-ears are also able to listen to your heart while you listen to tunes from their built-in 4GB memory or streamed over Bluetooth, with an app to collect the info for analysis. It’s a smart combo of wearable tech that none of the big boys thought of and another victory for the Kickstarter revolution.
ADRIAN HON SIX TO START It starts as just a game. You’re out walking with your headphones in and an audiobook called The Walk on, or you’re jogging to one called Zombies, Run! You can’t continue listening to the story unless you make a certain number of steps and the next thing you know you’re accidentally getting fit just to find out what happens next. Sneaky, Six To Start, very sneaky. We like your style.
NICK STANHOPE WE ARE WHAT WE DO While We Are What We Do like to be seen as a collective, the man at the helm is Nick Stanhope. He heads a team that’s developing an Android game that works in conjunction with wearable health-monitoring tech. The idea is that it teaches teenagers to control their breathing and heart-rate by rewarding them for staying calm. Beats stealing cars and killing pedestrians (in GTA V), right?
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[email protected]
INNOVATORS
TRAVEL Fully charged In 2009 a Roadster travelled 311 miles on a single charge, setting a new world record Satellite town So far the Dragon has only carried cargo into space, but SpaceX reckons it’ll soon be taking humans
Final frontier This is Falcon 9, the first private spacecraft to visit the International Space Station
Plotting to colonise the red planet ELON MUSK PAYPAL/TESLA/SPACE X Elon Musk is about as close to a real-life Tony Stark as we have. He’s a Willy Wonka of tech, concocting plans (probably from a volcano lair in the Pacific) before unleashing them on the public. But rather than sending overweight German children up industrial pipes he’s mainly
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sending stuff into space. Musk sold his first product at 12 years old – he got US$500 for a videogame he’d written called Blastar after teaching himself to code – but it was the sale of PayPal in 2002 that put him on Stuff’s map. Since then he’s reinvented the electric car, banishing associations with
milk floats and the G-Wiz courtesy of Tesla’s Roadster and seven-seater Model S, and set up SpaceX – a private space exploration company that aims to one day colonise Mars. “I see us going to Mars in about 10-11 years,” he told Stuff earlier this year, “and in a really big spaceship, not a little thing.” Musk compares that proposed first trip to the red planet to the English colonising America and envisions setting up a city home to millions of people, with homes, jobs and (probably) pet Martians. You
know, just in case we accidentally destroy Earth. In short, he’s a man with ambitions to match the size of his fortune. If he sounds like the twin brother of a Bond villain, that’s not a million miles from the truth. Musk recently spent some of his immense wealth on the actual submarine Lotus Esprit used in The Spy Who Loved Me and is building his own: “We’ve even joked about having a submarine-plane-car.” That’s a joke we can’t wait to see the punchline for.
INNOVATORS
App-ing to make getting lost get lost
Making our sci-fi dreams come true
Hailing a cab towards the future
The future of streamlined hybrid car design
AZMAT YUSUF CITYMAPPER It’s almost impossible to get lost these days. You’ve got one man to thank for that: Azmat Yusuf. He’s the man behind Citymapper – the app that gets you around London, New York, Paris and other less fashionable cities across the world. It makes the most of open, real-time data to show you various routes to your destination, how long each one will take, how much they’ll cost and if there are any problems that could cause delays. Creator Yusuf and his team are adding cities all the time – you can vote for which one they should do next on the Citymapper website – and he’s already got one eye on Rio in time for the Olympics in 2016. Yusuf told Stuff that he wanted “to build something that people would use regularly”. Considering we can barely get to the end of the road without using his app, looks like mission accomplished.
MARK DEROCHE AEROFEX Now we have plug sockets with USB ports in them, there are only really two main sci-fi dreams that remain: flying cars and hoverboards. Aerofex’s Aero-X fulfils both, with the added bonus of being a little like Luke Skywalker’s Landspeeder. On terra firma it’s a four-wheeled, two-person buggy-type vehicle, but in flight it uses downward-facing fans to levitate up to 10 feet off the ground at up to 45mph. Designed by aerospace engineer Mark DeRoche, it uses a clever steering system that removes the need for complex controls like those found in helicopters, making it similar to riding a motorbike. And while it’s not ready to ride away from a showroom just yet, it’s not pure fantasy either. Aerofex has tested the Aero-X and hopes to have them on sale by 2017. Yours for just US$85,000.
TRAVIS KALANICK UBER Before he became public enemy number one among London’s black-cab drivers, Travis Kalanick launched Uber in San Francisco in 2010. It’s an app that allows you to book a cab and watch it arrive on a map. In four years it’s taken over the world, like a convenient four-wheeled virus that runs at very affordable rates. And it’s not just for taxis now either. There’s Uber Ice Cream, which allows you to summon a 99 just like a cab, plus Uber Chopper: an on-demand chauffeur-flown helicopter service from New York City to the Hamptons at the far end of Long Island. Uber now operates in over 200 cities around the world, and while not everyone is happy to see them (those aforementioned cabbies for one), it’s a company dragging an age-old industry into the future.
PETER WOUDA VOLKSWAGEN XL1 If you want to make something streamlined and aerodynamic, the model to copy isn’t a Formula 1 car or fighter jet – it’s a penguin. Not when it’s in upright waddling mode, but when arrowing its way through the ocean. That’s what exterior design manager Peter Wouda would’ve been aiming for when he crafted the VW XL1 – the most efficient production car in the world. Everything about it is designed to cut through the air like a hot axe through ice cream, from the extremely low ride height and lack of wing mirrors (it has cameras instead) to the way it tapers towards a flat rear end. Combined with its hybrid of diesel and electric power, VW has managed to eke out over 300 miles to the gallon, and with its tech already filtering through to the VW GTE, it could turn out to be one of the most significant cars ever made.
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INNOVATORS
MONEY
Turning homes into hotels JOE GEBBIA, BRIAN CHESKY & NATHAN BLECHARCZYK AIRBNB
For a long time, the idea of letting a stranger in to stay at your house would conjure thoughts of a sofa-surfing hippy, leaving hair in the plughole, lice in the furniture and a dead badger in your bed. Airbnb has changed all that. Founded as Airbed & Breakfast in 2008 by roommates Joe Gebbia and Brian Chesky (Nathan Blecharczyk joined shortly afterwards), it now lets you rent or let an individual bed, whole room or entire property, often for far less than even a budget hotel. Including the Lenny Henry-approved ones. These days it also offers quirkier dorms, including caravans, treehouses, windmills and even shipping containers (don’t worry, you’ll wake up where you went to sleep). It’s now available in over 34,000 cities in 190 countries and there are security measures factored in, so the chances of getting a badger murderer are slimmer than ever.
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Lining your digital wallet with Bitcoins
Crowdfunding Hollywood films
Creating an open-source car company
Calling time on those infuriating booking fees
SATOSHI NAKAMOTO BITCOIN Satoshi Nakamoto could be one person. It could be many. He could a woman, or she could be a man. Or a cat (but that one’s unlikely given the coding required). Basically, Nakamoto is the Keyser Söze of digital currency. Bitcoin might be mysterious, unstable and met with perplexed expressions if you mention it to most, but it could become bigger than the world’s largest novelty cheque.
SIMON WEST SALTY You’d think the man behind The Expendables would have cash thrown at him to make whatever he wants; but following the success of Veronica Mars, Simon West has opted to crowdfund Salty via SyndicateRoom.com – meaning anyone who invests over £1000 will be eligible for a share of the profits. Considering West’s films have made over £600m at the box office, that might be a fairly decent bet.
JOHN B ROGERS JR LOCAL MOTORS If a camel is a horse designed by committee, Local Motors’ desert-ready Rally Fighter is the camel of the motoring world. Each part has been designed by a member of the Local Motors community, with over 35,000 designs submitted. The most popular are then developed and made in regional micro-factories, with each buyer chipping in. One day, all cars could be made this way.
MILLS AND SINX DICE It’s one of the great mysteries of our time. You bag a couple of tickets for a gig, click to buy them and out of nowhere there’s an extra £10 mystery tax been added on top. A booking fee, they call it. What is it for and why shouId I pay for it? Nobody knows. Ustwo’s Dice is an iOS and Android app that gets rid of them altogether, allowing you to use the app itself as the ticket.
FIRST TEST MOTOROLA MOTO 360
It’s your round Is this the beginning of the end for bad smartwatch design? Sophie Charara tries on the long-awaited Motorola Moto 360 £200 / motorola.co.uk
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We’re not going back to ugly smartwatches now. That’s not to say the Moto 360, the first real Android Wear icon, is perfect – nothing was going to live up to the hyping and hoping of the past six months. But it’s the first smartwatch you’ll really want to show off rather than hide under a sleeve. The 360’s head-turning design just makes gadget sense. It’s a watch… so it’s round. It’s made from premium materials such as stainless steel and leather. Its Gorilla Glass 3 screen protects it from dust and scratches. So it’s a little pricey at £200. It rests in a wireless handy dock to charge. But what’s it like to wear one? And should any other Android Wear watches get a look in?
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1 Design and build The steel body of the 360 feels sturdy, with a perfectly smooth circular edge, very slim bezels around the screen and a single power button on the right-hand side. It is chunky, though: at 11.5mm deep it does declare its presence. But at least it’s light. With the leather strap it weighs just 49g.
Good Meh Evil
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Six hours with the 360
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FIRST TEST MOTOROLA MOTO 360
3 Android Wear This the most comfortable Android Wear watch yet. When you get a notification on your phone, the 360 vibrates and a card pops up on the watch face. The wrist-flick gesture to turn the screen on works well enough, and voice search and commands are just as excellent as, if not better than, its Android Wear rivals.
4 Performance We’ve had a couple of teething problems with the 360. While pairing to our phone went smoothly, soon after the Bluetooth connection dropped out. We’ve also noticed a bit of lag with Google Now cards. Both the LG G Watch and Gear Live performed better, so if you’ve used other Android Wear watches you’ll spot the difference.
5 Battery life A day should be the minimum for a smartwatch battery. Sadly, the 360 doesn’t always reach that. This battery gets us home from the office – but just about. On the first day Stuff got our mitts on it, the 360 conked out at eight and a half hours. At least Motorola has made charging pleasant with its clever wireless ck.
I’ th m g e v oi ee ng ee to ry lea las ve t m it d B in oc sc ut I ut ke re lo et d en ve od un , li th ay til ke e … an wi r e od le d b ss ed ch sid ar e a gin lar g Ge m w tt ith o ou bu ta ss sk to ing p, g . S et or bu ry s , C tim G ity e ca lan m s rd cin ap s. g pe W at ait g r , w rou he p W re h T ’s a w he m ts e’ ba y Ap re tt ph p ho er on ch ok y l e? at ed ife m :t i he g 36 ht b 0’ e a ss p ta ain yi b ng u pu t t
2 Screen While colours don’t pop off the 1.56in display, they are appealing. At 205ppi, the resolution might not match the Samsung Gear Live’s, but it is sharp – text looks fairly crisp, if a bit distorted around the very edge of the raised, waterproof Gorilla Glass 3. The feature we love is auto brightness, a light sensor that adjusts to the environment.
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Tech specs Screen 1.56in, 320x290, 205ppi OS Android Wear Processor TI OMAP 3 RAM 512MB Storage 4GB Battery 320mAh Dimensions 46x11.5mm, 49g
The many faces of the Moto 360 Motorola has squeezed an impressive amount of functionality into one small, circular screen
Q Dial up a dial
Q Don’t be square
From an animated ticking clockface with timezone dials to a stylish rotating set of circles, the 360’s faces show off the form factor superbly. There are only seven (for now) but they’re customisable.
We’ve seen examples of apps making full use of the round screen. But some apps we’ve tried have cut-off text, having been designed only to be square. We’re sure this will improve in time.
Q It’s got heart
Q A strapping lad
T heart-rate monitor The works, though we’d stick wo to ssports accessories for med dical readings. Both the he re red-and-white-hued reader and the circular graphic showing weekly goals look very pretty.
Compared to the rubber-band-like strap that Samsung provides, this leather one feels lovely. This is the first smartwatch we’ve really compared to a premium wristwatch.
We’re suckers for a pretty face, and this stylish and supremely wearable smartwatch doesn’t disappoint. The watchfaces are classy, Android Wear is as clever a as ever and you won’t want to take it off. Just bear in mind that the battery life might make you anxious and it does need a performance boost. @sophiecharara
STUFF SAYS ++++, The first wearable you’ll want to wear – the Moto 360 is just a few specs short of brilliance 73
TEST APPS
App:roved FOR ANDROID TWEAKERS
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FOR FINER DINERS
O Hangar
ODojo
The sort of app that looks rubbish until you try it, at which point you realise it’s even better than chocolate-covered Netflix. It simply installs a shortcuts bar in your notifications screen then populates it with your favourite apps based on how often you use them. You can also pin apps to it, install another launcher on the homescreen and view app usage stats. But, useful as those extras are, it’s the notifications launcher that’ll change your life. Seriously, it’s that good.
Many apps purport to swishen up your social life, but when you search for a nice new restaurant you get a Wimpy next to a motorway (actually we have a soft spot for Wimpy, but you know what we mean). Dojo offers a nicely curated selection of pop-ups, exhibitions, new exercise classes and other delights. Offering Time Out expertise and YPlan immediacy, it’s a must-have for Londoners – just a shame it’s restricted to one city for now.
Stuff says +++++ £free / Android
Stuff says +++++ £free / iOS
FOR BAD DREAM PLAYERS
FOR MEAN FINGERS
O The Nightmare Cooperative
O They Need To Be Fed 3
Collaboration and a unified front are all very well, but there’s a point when these things can go a teensy bit too far. That point is probably when you’re part of a cooperative tasked with raiding dungeons full of things very much out to kill you, yet still feel compelled to act as one, no matter the consequences. But this is a skilful, sharp, refined mash-up of puzzling and rogue-like turn-based play. Highly recommended.
You might think your job’s a bit rubbish, but it’s got nothing on the little critters whose lot is to leap about the place, darting between tiny planetoids, trying not to get killed by all kinds of hostile things, and scooping up diamonds along the way. At level’s end, they find a giant plant with far more teeth than foliage should own, jump into its maw and get munched to death. A far cry from Gardeners’ World, but an excellent little platform game.
Stuff says +++++ £2.49 / iOS
Stuff says +++++ £1.19 / Android; £1.49 / iOS
TEST APPS
Mini meme
OComics Comics by Comixology was the Amazon of comics, until Amazon bought it. Now it’s just Amazon, with the politics that brings: the Android application lost Google Play payments, and iOS lost its store entirely. But, oh, the range. It’s hard to stay angry when there are so many affordable comics to buy. Stuff says ++++, £free / iOS, Android
COMIC READERS ZOK! BIF! POW! ZAKAM! And other stereotypical words you might find in a comic! If you can tear yourself away from ink and paper, grab one of these graphic apps immediately!
OChunky We’re long-time Comic Zeal fans, and that £2.99 app is still best for iPhone. On iPad, though, Chunky won us round with its streamlined interface, great controls, smart upscaling and two-up landscape option. There’s plentiful cloud support, but a £1.99 ‘pro’ upgrade adds a mini web server too. Stuff says +++++ from £free / iOS
OMarvel Unlimited
OComiCat
OSequential
O2000 AD
Described as ‘the Netflix of comics’, there is a whiff of bargain bin about Marvel Unlimited. But c’mon: for $10 per month you get access to 15,000 digital issues, in an all-you-can-eat buffet of spandex and scientific experiments giving rise to superpowers in an extremely unlikely fashion.
Yes, we’ve – gasp! – gone for a paid Android app. That’s because ComiCat is excellent, automatically scanning your device to find any lurking comics and deftly handling whatever CBRs and PDFs you throw at it, unlike most Android comic viewers – and we tried many. (Cheapskates can make do with Perfect Viewer).
A comic app for the more discerning reader. The Sequential collection is heavily curated and possibly a bit worthy, but you can guarantee pretty much anything you buy will deserve your time and money. The reader itself is smooth and fast, if lacking Chunky’s level of elegance.
Edited by a green alien with a phone dial glued to his head, and featuring fascist future cop with a permasnarl Judge Dredd, 2000 AD is a British institution. Thirty-seven years young, the comic’s digital venture is sleek and smartly designed, providing access to 2000 AD itself, the Megazine and classic thrills.
Stuff says ++++, £free ($10/month) / iOS, Android
Stuff says +++++ £1.99 / Android
Stuff says ++++, £free / iPad
Stuff says +++++ £free / iOS
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TECHSPEDITION
Crew of two If you’re flying in a particularly hazardous location it’s best to have two remotes: one person focusing on the UAV and another concerned only with the camera.
Hold steady The drone has six carbon fibre propellers, retractable landing gear and a GPS-enabled A2 flight controller, which allow it to remain stable even in strong Alpine winds.
, w e Flying around Britain in Google Maps’ 3D view is one of our favourite wastes of time. But next-gen mapping isn’t just being used to destroy afternoon productivity or provide a bird’s-eye view of how your garden looked in 2009. Thanks to a combination of drones, clever software and some
souped-up Land Rovers, scientists in the Alps are taking it to new extremes to help study mountains and the effects of climate change in mind-boggling detail. Sam Kieldsen took a ride with the team to find out how it works and what it could mean for our understanding of the real Earth…
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TECHSPEDITION
ountains haven’t always been seen as playgrounds for snowbased frolics. Without films, TV or photos to prepare them, many European travellers a few hundred years ago were so overwhelmed by the sight of the Alps that they’d request blindfolds as they were led through the rocky passes. But my eyes are wide open as I head into the French Alpine town of Chamonix, nestled in a wide, forested valley between those same imposing mountains. Because I’m about to see a brilliant new method of surveying these mountains – a technique that involves some incredible, and surprisingly accessible, gadgetry.
Drone rangers I meet with Mark Allan, a PhD researcher from the University of Northumbria, who specialises in the study of glacial valleys, of which there are dozens in the Alps. Mark is among the first to analyse these valleys with this technique, which means he gets to fly a camera-equipped drone through some of Europe’s most stunning scenery. As jobs go… “We’re looking at how the landscape is changing in response to a change in the climate,” Mark tells me over lunch in a Chamonix cafe. “We’ve been using state-ofthe-art 3D technology to create models of the landscape and we use these models to detect which areas are changing in response to shifts in glacial patterns.” For the past few months, Mark and his team of fellow researchers have been driving all around the Alps – Switzerland, Italy, Austria, Germany, Slovenia and now France – in a Land Rover Defender carrying climbing kit, tents, £50,000 worth of GPS gear, an insanely high-spec PC and an £8000 unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Oh, and a Sony NEX-7 camera – the sort you can pick up in Jessops for a few hundred quid.
Third eye “Using the UAV, or on foot, or in a helicopter, we take hundreds of images of glacial valleys and combine these to create 3D
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models using a process called structure-from-motion,” says Mark. The images (as many as 1000 per survey) are fed into a piece of software called Bundler, which analyses them all over the course of a day or so, identifies the same rock features that occur in multiple images using colour and shading, and links them together. But it’s not all flying drones and sitting in front of a PC. Ahead of each photo survey, Mark and his team venture out into the glacial valleys and place square white cardboard targets on the valley slopes. I ask him how he does that. “Carefully!” he laughs. The process often involves climbing gear, as some of the valleys aren’t easily accessible. “In terms of adding ground control, you look for features that you can physically get to… and that don’t move.” GPS data is then taken over each target’s location. When the drone flies overhead, the targets will appear in the pictures and can be used to add scale and location data to the models.
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Next-gen Google Earth That evening, I get a chance to fly through some of the resulting 3D models on the team’s computer. Looking like a hi-res version of Google Earth’s 3D mode, they’re so detailed that you can make out individual boulders – not to mention rock climbers. This level of detail is essential, as it’s how Mark will identify the changes occurring in the landscape when he repeats the surveys in the next two years. But it also points to an excitingly precise future for Google Maps: Now, how many seats does that pub garden have…? Because this technique is so innovative, Mark doesn’t have
“We’ve seen the landscape changing – we’ve seen the ice falling and heard the glacier moving” older models to which he can compare his own, but he has been poring over the archives of the Royal Geographical Society in London, which include images of the same valleys from over 100 years ago. “That allowed us to find out exactly where these glaciers were at a particular point in the past. It has been crucial to the success of the project.” Eventually, Mark will be able to determine just how quickly
the landscape is changing. And next year he’ll be showing off his findings in an exhibition at the Royal Geographical Society. He tells me to expect 3D printed glacier models and 3D video fly-throughs created using the team’s data. I ask him if his months of camping out in the snow and braving icy glaciers are paying off. “As a life experience it’s been unbelievable,” he says. “We’ve driven through some of the most impressive mountain passes in the world and we’ve seen some views that are going to stay with me forever.” And from a scientific point of view? “We’ve seen first-hand how these landscapes are changing: we’ve seen landslides, seen the ice falling, heard the glacier moving. It’s incredible.”
Drones: a secret life
1 Land Rover Defender The Land Rover acts as a UAV launch and landing pad via a platform on its roof
2 DJI Spreading Wings S800 Evo The chief tool for surveying glacial valleys, worth £8000 Goose-shooing After geese started bothering visitors to Canada’s Petrie Island, officials turns to UAVs to provide a solution. Using scare tactics, drones reduced the number of feathery nuisances from about 120 to just 20.
3 Terra Nova Ultra Quasar tents Because it’s hard to find a hotel room halfway up an Alp
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An extra dimension This project turns 2D photos into 3D models using a heavy bit of academic software called Bundler. But how about trying its trickery on a smaller scale?
Structure Sensor
PVMS2
Seene
This Kinect for your iPad lets you scan rooms, people and objects in three dimensions in a few seconds, so you can work out if that Eames chair will squeeze into your lounge. Or if your dog will make a nice 3D-printed ornament. $379 (iPad) / structure.io
Used by ILM, Weta and Google Maps, this slightly more professional but free application weaves together 2D photos of rigid objects (buildings rather than pedestrians) into a mesh model to play around with like digital Lego. £free / www.di.ens.fr/pmvs/
This camera app can’t (yet) capture full 3D models, but it does let you take 3D photos by plotting points on your subject and using parallax to determine where they are in 3D space. Yes, you can use it for selfies, if you must. £free (iOS) / seene.co
Crop-dusting UAVs can spray crops with pesticides far more quickly than a tractor and more cheaply than a plane. Farmers in Japan have been using Yamaha RMX helicopters to boost their yields for 20 years.
Web access Facebook purchased Ascenta, a company specialising in solarpowered UAVs, to build flying Wi-Fi hotspots that will bring the net to parts of the developing world that as yet can’t ‘like’ cat pictures. Lucky them.
Criminal-catching Seeking an aerial view of crime scenes, police in Seattle employed a hexacopter drone sporting a thermal imaging camera as an alternative to a full-size chopper – but the programme was dropped over public fears.
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GROUP TEST ELECTRIC CARS
Q TESLA MODEL S P85
Q BMW i8
THE LEAN, THE MEAN & THE GREEN Stuff’s steeliest pilots whizz from coast to coast to find out which of the new eco-supercars is the most future-friendly
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GROUP TEST ELECTRIC CARS
Q VOLKSWAGEN XL1
The mission Westonsuper-Mare
Cheddar Gorge
The route START Weston-super-Mare, birthplace of John Cleese (whose family name was originally Cheese) and gateway to the Bristol Channel.
Till Tilshead d Garage Ga ge ge
STOP 1 Cheddar Gorge, birthplace of actual cheese and a number of goats. The goats seemed particularly interested in nibbling the white paint from the middle of the road.
Clacket Clacke cke cket k t Lane Lane La an Services
STOP 2 Tilshead, on Salisbury Plain. Londis sandwiches all round. STOP 3 Clacket Lane Services, M25, home to a highvoltage charging point
W itst Whitst Whi tsta able ab
that put enough sparks in the Tesla to take it all the way to Whitstable. FINISH Whitstable: oysters (hmm…), fish and chips (better!) and England’s largest village green.
[ Pictures James Lipman ]
It began as a noble endeavour: drive three practical electric cars from coast to coast, and put everyone’s range anxiety at ease. Then we looked at which cars to take, and we realised we didn’t just want to save the planet: we wanted to zoom around it in a fleet of next-gen dream machines that outpace their old gas-guzzling forebears on a whiff of petrol and a gulp of lightning. So, we rounded up three different approaches to the eco supercar – BMW’s i8 hybrid supercar, Volkswagen’s retro-futuristic XL1 hybrid and Tesla’s all-electric Model S – for a low-carbon cruise across England’s middle.
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GROUP TEST ELECTRIC CARS
TOP 5 DRIVING SONGS FOR THE MODEL S Q THE PRESIDENTS OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA Mach 5 Q ROY ORBISON I Drove All Night Q THE JEZABELS Electric Lover Q MANCHESTER ORCHESTRA Simple Math Q SCORPIONS Too Far
THE CHALLENGING ONE
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Screen-tastic
Extra factor
Family-friendly
Modest machine
Not only does the Tesla have a touchscreen the size of two iPads – it’s got another screen visible through the wheel.
Full disclosure: our test car came with enough extras to take it up to £100,000, but the standard P85 has all the essentials.
Unlike the other bachelor-mobiles, the Tesla has enough room for four plus a whole holiday’s worth of luggage.
It doesn’t have the out-there looks of the i8 or XL1 , but that’s part of the charm. And you still get attention when charging.
GROUP TEST ELECTRIC CARS
TESLA MODEL S P85 Q Price £69,000 / teslamotors.com Q Driver Tom Parsons The i8 and XL1 are cheat cars. They’ll run forever because they run on petrol. Admittedly a much smaller amount of petrol than the average car, but everyone knows petrol’s going to cost £450 per teaspoon soon. When that happens, batteries will be the only way to power your car, and the i8 and XL1 have got about as much battery power as a Sony Walkman.
It’s a big ’un The Tesla’s different. This thing has a massive 85kWh battery that it reckons is good for 312 miles. It may look less radical than the other two, but underneath it’s a technological marvel, and arguably represents the true future of motoring. And boy is it big. Nerve-rackingly so when your first experience of it involves the close confines of the labyrinthine Westfield. The 720p feed from the parking camera that’s fed to the ginormous screen in the centre console does come in handy for reversing, though.
Practical but powerful When the challenge started I had 300-odd miles in the ‘tank’, and by our first stop in Cheddar I was totally in love with the Model S. Yes, it’s practical (a boot in the boot and in the bonnet, plus loads of legroom) and yes, it’s gizmo-tastic (it’s all touchscreen-controlled, from the panoramic roof to the suspension height, steering weight and an absolutely humongous Google Maps-powered sat-nav), but it’s also insanely, giggle-inducingly fast. Faster than the i8, in fact. And this is immediate power. No delay for the car to decide how it’s going to hook up two different motors to most effectively deliver the acceleration, just all the power you could possibly require the moment you put your foot down. I thought I’d miss the noise of an engine, but there’s something just as exciting about that burst of speed being accompanied by near-silence – it’s like the Starship Enterprise
STUFF SAYS ★★★★★
entering warp, and what could be more awesome than that? Onwards to the winding roads of Salisbury Plain, and the Tesla proves to be pretty darn chuckable for a car so big and heavy. You can’t throw it into corners quite the same way you can the lithe little i8, but there’s still more than enough grip to take them far quicker than you probably should. And you can fit a Tom Wiggins in the bonnet – something we genuinely did while photographing our motors.
Quick pit stop I’d avoided using the air-con, but had otherwise driven the Tesla like the frustrated racing driver I am so far, yet the readout was telling me I had enough juice left to make it the rest of the way to Whitstable. Just. Before risking it I did a little research on zap-map.com, only to discover that Whitstable doesn’t have a single electric car charger (seriously, Whitstable, sort it out). Now I like Whitstable a lot, but I didn’t fancy being stranded there in a totally dead car, so it was with some reluctance that I had to insist the convoy stop at Clacket Lane Services for a little power-up. Thankfully this meant I had the range to complete the journey and get home again after a 50-minute break – plenty of time for a really rubbish Costa Coffee experience.
A car for the future By the end of our challenge I was still in love with the Model S, but there was no escaping that I’d been challenged more than the other two. Sure, for 360 days a year the Tesla’s range would be way more than I needed and I could just charge it overnight, but I occasionally enjoy a drive to Devon, Wales or Scotland, and I’m the type to find nothing other than depression at motorway services. That’s why I wouldn’t buy a Tesla now. Next year there will be 23 Superchargers in the UK, and they can pump in 170 miles’ worth of charge in 30 minutes. That’s when I’d buy a Tesla. If I could actually afford it.
Driver specs Last car owned Honda Civic Type R Fuel Lucozade, Cornish pasty Favourite UK road A939 near Tomintoul Driving hero Jean-Luc Picard
Tech specs Power 85kWh battery Top speed 130mph 0-60mph 4.2 seconds Weight 2100kg Claimed fuel efficiency Infinite (but a 312-mile range per charge)
Going totally petrol-free is utterly amazing, even if it’s not always easy 83
GROUP TEST ELECTRIC CARS
TOP 5 DRIVING SONGS FOR THE XL1 Q KRAFTWERK Aerodynamik Q WU-TANG CLAN Diesel Q MY BLOODY VALENTINE Glider Q XZIBIT Paparazzi Q MODEST MOUSE Perpetual Motion Machine
VOLKSWAGEN XL1 Q Price £98,000 / volkswagen.co.uk Q Driver Tom Wiggins
Driver specs Last car owned Toyota Corolla GL Executive Fuel Beefeater mixed grill and a banoffee sundae Favourite UK road A272 Driving hero Inspector Clouseau
84
Choosing a Tesla or an i8 for this challenge is like using a fork to eat a bowl of soup: frustrating and wasteful. That’s why I parked my behind into the driver’s seat of the VW XL1 – a concept come to life that Volkswagen claims is the most fuel-efficient hybrid available. How could I possibly be beaten?
Cut ’n’ shut The XL1 looks like two cars stuck together. I like to think the squaredoff rear end makes it look like Ferrari’s ‘Breadvan’ 250 GT but in all honesty it’s probably more like a futuristic hearse, albeit one with only enough space for a generously sized dog. It accelerates a bit like one
too (a hearse, not a dead dog) but with everything about it designed to reduce drag and extend its range – from the covered rear wheels and compressed cardboard interior to the lack of power steering – the XL1 is clearly all about efficiency, not power or luxury. It even eschews airflow-disrupting wing mirrors for cameras. Only the i8’s head-up display is more sci-fi than that.
Cheddar Gorge-ous Don’t get me wrong, the XL1 is by no means a chore to drive. Setting off from Weston-super-Mare in all-electric mode, I quietly nipped through early morning traffic following the built-in Garmin’s
guidance towards Cheddar, gradually getting used to the Tarmac-scraping driving position, slight lack of rear visibility and increased attention from camera phones. Even a local bus driver made his commuter cargo wait while he took a picture. No doubt the snaking roads of Cheddar Gorge were a little tougher on the unassisted steering of my XL1 than the other two but the narrow tyres meant I barely noticed and I still beat them to the first checkpoint, giving me time to pair my phone to the car’s sat-nav and stream my roadtrip playlist to the car’s speakers while I waited.
GROUP TEST ELECTRIC CARS
THE STYLISH ONE Offset seating The two seats are offset, which not only makes it easier to see at junctions but also creates enough space for the batteries.
It’s butter-smooth Because it doesn’t need to worry about downforce, the XL1 is actually more aerodynamic than a Formula 1 car (but less than a penguin).
Custom-made Apart from the badge, which comes from a Scirocco, everything is designed and made to order. That’s partly why it’s so expensive.
Adrenaline rush The XL1 is only about the size of a Polo, although it feels a bit like one of those solarpowered wings with wheels that break world records.
Perpetual motion
Tech specs Power 800cc diesel plus 20KW electric Top speed 99mph 0-60mph 12.5 seconds Weight 795kg Claimed fuel efficiency 313mpg
After a minor detour into the Stonehenge visitor centre car park thanks to out-of-date maps, I started to get into the swing of driving this clever little hybrid. Whenever I hit a proper descent I lifted off the accelerator and glided down the hill to let the battery suck up some additional charge. At one point it had dropped to about 9% and without plugging it in I managed to revive it all the way back to 16.5%. Is VW on the verge of inventing a perpetual motion machine? That’s not to say I drove the XL1 like it had an unexploded bomb
STUFF SAYS ★★★★★
onboard. I put my foot down to overtake slow-moving tractors on the A37 and when I hit the M3 it never struggled to keep up with the rat race.
Say cheese I don’t care what Will Dunn says, the XL1 is by far the most eye-catching of these cars. I haven’t had my picture taken by so many strangers since Beyoncé piggybacked me through Piccadilly Circus. When we stopped at Clacket Lane it earned another admiring glance from me when five litres of diesel (half a tank) added 250km to the XL1’s range.
Slow and steady... The sun had already started to go down when I got to Whitstable, just a couple of minutes behind the vastly more powerful i8 and comfortably ahead of Tom’s Tesla. Hares, meet the tortoise. It might lack some of the luxuries offered by the other cars but that’s the price you pay for such incredible efficiency. The XL1 has air-con and a surprisingly connected stereo and sat-nav system. I think I can survive without touchscreens and voice control when half a tank of fuel costs less than two pints of lager.
A glimpse of the future, the XL1 ticks every box. Now all we need is a four-seater version… 85
GROUP TEST ELECTRIC CARS
BMW i8 Q Price £95,000 / bmw.co.uk Q Driver Will Dunn There are plenty of examples of clever, bespoke technology that make the i8 a singularly brilliant car, but the most important thing is this: it looks like the Batmobile. Driving it is like walking through a busy shopping centre with a levitating clockwork monkey made of gold: everyone wants to know what that expensive-looking thing is. Cars slow down and speed up to be alongside it, usually with a phone held to the window.
Goat-botherer The i8 doesn’t just look like the Batmobile; it also moves like it’s just emerged from a cave through a waterfall. While Cheddar Gorge’s population of goats dawdled in front of every other car on the road, for the i8 they stepped aside – partly because it looks like it might eat them, and partly because of the noise it makes. When you push it out of its near-silent electric roll, the i8 leaps forward with a cackle-inducing robot growl that is one of the most satisfying noises in the world. Our second stop, a deserted bit of road somewhere in Somershire or Borset or something, was a good 50 miles of mini-roundabouts and country lanes away. After a bit of mucking about with the sat-nav, I was guided by easily the best heads-up display I’ve seen in a car: directions and speed limits are projected onto the windscreen, floating steadily in your field of view. While naturally I observed the rules of the road, I arrived at our next rendezvous with time to buy and consume a chicken sandwich and a 250ml bottle of chocolate milk before the next car turned up.
Snarly precision On the motorway and in Comfort mode, the i8 drives like a BMW, albeit an incredibly posh one from the future. On a snaky little road in Sport, the dials go red, the engine develops a more high-pitched snarl and the handling becomes light and twitchy. The i8 is ferociously quick, but it
STUFF SAYS ★★★★★ 86
moves with a precision that speaks of some kind of advanced machine intelligence. You can also speed into a corner with conviction. I doubt you all remember the Mitsubishi GTO I spent months upgrading in Gran Turismo 2 as a teenager, but that’s what it reminds me of: a 4WD with more power than seems realistic for something so sure-footed.
It’s good to be inside Next, we put the three cars through the most exacting motoring experience in the UK: the M25. Fortunately, even in the variablespeed hell of our nation’s most boring thoroughfare, the i8 is a wonderful place to be. The front two seats are luxurious, divided by a wide central hump that also houses iDrive’s minimal but effective wheel-button control system. The back seats are big enough for a handbag or a medium-sized duck. My i8 had the Harman/Kardon speaker upgrade, allowing me to wallow in a big bath of music while the motorway did its thing outside.
Driver specs Last car owned Vauxhall Astra 1.4 Fuel Coffee, beef crisps Favourite UK road B3212 Driving hero Michael Knight
First place, naturally It was to be expected that the i8 got to Whitstable comfortably ahead of the others, but as I glimpsed the east coast it had one more surprise for me: in the gullwing doors there’s a gently glowing strip of blue that only becomes noticeable when it gets dark, underlining the fighter-jet feel of the cockpit. It’s just an LED strip, but it sums up what’s brilliant about this BMW: it’s a concept car that has, for once, actually been built with its mad design flourishes, spaceship lights, science-fiction powertrain and carbon-fibre everything. It’s a supercar that uses as much petrol as a small hatchback (much less if you drive carefully), but the best thing about it is its lack of compromise. Someone had a bold, exciting idea for how it should look and what it should do, and BMW made that idea real. That doesn’t happen often.
Tech specs Power 357bhp Top speed Limited to 155mph 0-60mph 4.4secs Weight 1485kg Claimed fuel efficiency 134.5mpg
It’s the freaking Batmobile. Seriously, what more do you want?
GROUP TEST ELECTRIC CARS
TOP 5 DRIVING SONGS FOR THE I8 Q STEREOLAB Super Electric Q DEFTONES Be Quiet And Drive Q KRAFTWERK Autobahn Q MOGWAI Wizard Motor Q PRINCE Batdance
THE LIGHTNING-QUICK ONE Scooper-car
Go electric
Non-crash tech
Nice view
The i8’s bold sidescoops don’t just look bat-amazing, they’re also bat-practical: you could fit a baguette in there.
While our i8 stayed in Comfort or Sport, you can drive it as a completely electric car in eDrive mode, giving a range of 23 miles.
It has some very sophisticated collision avoidance tech we didn’t have the nerve to test, what with it not belonging to us…
…but we did appreciate the car being studded with cameras that give you a drone’s-eye view, making parking much easier.
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GROUP TEST ELECTRIC CARS
“WITH NEW DRIVING HABITS WE RECKON WE’D HAVE THE XL1 WELL OVER 200MPG”
THE WINNER Q VOLKSWAGEN XL1 T TES R E NN I W
For behindthe-scenes images download the Stuff tablet app
88
We’d be foolish to suggest that the XL1 offered more visceral, foot-down driving excitement than either the Tesla or the BMW, but this test was all about making it across the country in the most efficient way possible – and considering the Model S couldn’t manage it without lengthy recharging and the i8’s 40mpg average is about as eco-friendly as a heavy smoker coughing in a kitten’s face, the VW almost wins by default. In terms of space it’s pretty much equal to the BMW, while the Tesla’s seven seats mean nothing if your answer to “Are we nearly there yet?” always has to be: “We just have to
stop again to charge it.” For an all-electric car to be practical for a journey like this we need more fast chargers at the roadside – not those that take eight hours to hit 100%, but something that brings charging an electric car in line with filling a tank of petrol. We got an average of 133mpg from the XL1. That’s some way off the claimed figure but we spent most of the journey driving it like any other car. With a few new habits we reckon we’d have it comfortably over 200mpg. Just add a couple more seats and this would be the ultimate green machine.
WI-FI than any Wi-Fi repeater Wi-Fi in any room* eception for smartphones ablets
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* Required: broadband Internet connection, router and active power sockets within one property.
More information: www.devolo.co.uk/wi-fi Tel.: +44 (0)1865 784344 Email:
[email protected]
TEST SAMSUNG GALAXY S5 MINI
Dinky dimples Each year the Android king is joined by a little sprog, a Happy Meal alternative to the Big Mac. The Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini is this year’s kid QFrom a quick glance, the S5 Mini looks like an S5 blasted with a shrink ray. Its 5.1-inch screen has been minified to a 4.5-inch one, but the dimpled back, the slightly questionable ridged chrome plastic sides and the light-up soft keys are all identical. QOne positive change over its big sister is the waterproofing, which doesn’t need a microUSB port cover. It also packs in the two main bonus features of the full-size S5: the heart-rate sensor and fingerprint scanner. QBut while it may be tougher, the Mini isn’t as sharp. The screen is scaled down to 720p and, although the Super AMOLED display looks good, with strong black levels and punchy colours, it is not dramatically better than some of its cheaper rivals. QAnother thing that’s not quite so hot is general performance. There are some laggy moments, such as when it’s updating an app. The Exynos 3 Quad 3470 isn’t really any more powerful than the Snapdragon 400 in last year’s S4 Mini. QWhile it looks and feels very similar to its big brother, there are cutbacks. So it’s not bad, just unremarkable. We can’t help but feel that Samsung’s asking for slightly too much cash for this little Android.
Tech specs OS Android KitKat Screen 4.5in, 1280x720 Super AMOLED RAM 1.5GB Storage 16GB (microSD expandable) Cameras 8MP main, 2.1MP front Connectivity 4G, micro USB 2.0, Bluetooth 4.0 Battery 2100mAh Dimensions 131x65x9.1mm, 120g
Contrasting fortunes
Long-distance runner
Unfortunately the S5 Mini’s camera only has half the power of the S5’s fancy 16MP Isocell snapper. It’s fast and image quality is decent, but it’s less adept with bright-light contrasts.
Stamina isn’t bad in the S5 Mini. You can comfortably get a day and a half’s use without touching any power-saving modes or being careful with how much 3G/4G data you fling around the place.
STUFF SAYS The cut-down S5 is a fairly high-quality phone, if a bit pricey ++++, Not quite a flagship experience Tom Parsons
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The Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini is a pretty good miniature take on the Galaxy S5. Most importantly, you get the S5’s fantastic screen contrast and black levels. But look a little deeper and there are a few cuts – a far less powerful CPU and a far more ordinary camera being the deepest. It just isn’t quite the flagship experience in a compact chassis that we were hoping for, and I reckon the Samsung’s just a bit too expensive.
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FASHION
warm
stuff [ Words Lindsey Baker Photography Matt Beedle ]
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1 Finisterre Puffa Jacket £165 / finisterreuk.com
2 Minimum Puffa Jacket £130 / minimum.dk
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FASHION
1 Ma.Strum Parka £450 / mastrum.com
2 Burton Frontier Jacket
1
£190 / burton.com
3 Iuter Bomber Jacket £160 / asos.com / iuter.com
4 Patagonia M’s Fitz Roy Down Jacket £300 / patagonia.com/eu
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3
4
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FASHION
1
2
3
4
1 Alpha Industries Wool Camo Coat £220 / alphaindustries.de
2 Element Fur Collar Coat £110 / elementbrand.com
3 Bellfield Rain Coat £60 / bellfieldclothing.com
4 Nobis Barry Parka £725 / nobis.ca
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T E S T L A P I E R R E O V E R V O LT
Watt are you on? An electric mountain bike? Surely that’s cheating? But there’s no denying the Lapierre Overvolt’s benefits – like overtaking angry people on climbs QLapierre’s full-suspension electric mountain bike has proper mountain bike components and the latest Bosch Performance electric kit, providing up to 275% assistance to your pedalling and 60Nm of torque. The four modes of assistance and the 400Wh battery pack let you choose between a range of 30-110 miles, but only if you’re pedalling as well. QThe Overvolt, especially in Sport mode, fires up hills so on tricky, technical climbs you can sit in the saddle and power-pedal your way to the top – with the suspension absorbing rocks and roots and the Bosch serving out torque to keep you rolling. QEven in its lowest, longestlasting ‘Eco’ mode it’s still giving you 50% assistance, a less obvious advantage until you look behind you and see the hateful looks your biopowered mates are giving you… QUnfortunately, it’s still EU-regulated to a 15mph maximum speed so the motor assistance will cut out once you hit that speed and only leg power will convince it to go quicker… at which point, physics will reveal how hard it is to pedal a 50lb bike. QThe market for this isn’t huge but older riders or those with an injury might find the assistance lets them rip up the hills rather than give it all up. Or you might just be a bit lazy, and that’s OK.
Tech specs Gears Shimano XT Shadow Plus 10-speed Battery Lithium ion 400Wh Brakes Formula The One hydraulic disk Range 30-110 miles claimed Motor Bosch Performance 250W Weight 20.2kg Price £3800
Heavy handling
Leave them in the cafe
You may just be overtaken as you manhandle your Overvolt around corners. That said, the Bosch motor’s placement down at the bottom bracket does keep the handling manageable and centred.
But later, when the rest of the group are exhausted, you’ll get in another trail before home time. Then, riding on your own and with failing energy levels, is when the bike’s assistance makes real sense.
STUFF SAYS For those who need an extra push, the price is nearly justified ++++, Get off the off-road Fraser Macdonald @herebefraser
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All across the British Isles are purpose-built bike centres where bazillions of bikers get their fix on world-class trails. But in-between are more organic trails where the rights of way have, in some cases, been fought tooth and nail between walkers, horses, bikers and landowners. The emergence of electric mountain bikes might raise some hackles, even if they’re not actually powerful enough to do any damage. Ride light, bike geeks.
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TEST GAMES
PS4, PS3, Xbox One, Xbox 360 / bungie.net
It’s the most expensive and most pre-ordered game of all time, but can Bungie’s first post-Halo shooter live up to the massive expectations? ince the term ‘MMO’ was used in relation to Destiny there’s been anticipation from some that Bungie’s latest would be a Halo-like FPS of World Of Warcraft size. That’s not what you get, but you do get a game that’s truly massive by FPS standards, built for multiplayer from the ground up, and more cinematic and thrilling than any MMO in existence. The story is proper heavy sci-fi: omnipotent spherical beings, space travel and aliens closing on Earth’s
S
last remaining city. It’s actually a really rich, deep setting. It’s also epic in the way Halo is epic: a glorious, swelling score and gorgeous storytelling cut-scenes. And there’s a sort of narrator: the Ghost, voiced by Game Of Thrones’ Peter Dinklage, is a little robotic guide linked to your character. You can also link up with other Guardians: the entire game is designed to be played with others. You can solo most of it if you want (you’ll still meet other players on their own journeys), but the idea
is that you tackle everything as part of a three-person fireteam, ideally comprising one of each character class: Hunter, Warlock and Titan. In action it plays very much like Halo – fast, a bit floaty and bombastic. Every weapon looks, sounds and feels hugely powerful, and the class-specific special attacks are as deadly as they are spectacular. The main campaign itself isn’t long, but most of the story missions require that you’re at a certain level, and that means
you need to regularly divert to do a Strike (a storied side-mission), some guardian-on-guardian action in the Crucible or some wandering and side-missioning in the free-roam mode. And even when you’ve finished the main story there are Raids: supremely challenging six-player missions for the flashiest loot. Bungie says it’s going to keep expanding and updating Destiny. Maybe one day it really will be bigger than Warcraft… Tom Parsons
STUFF SAYS Halo meets Diablo meets WOW: one of the very best console shooters +++++ 100
TEST GAMES
The new Guardian guide
You choose your missions from up in orbit before boarding a ship to begin
It’s not all spells and skill trees – there’s plenty of old-skool fragging to do
Creating an avatar to represent all of your Destiny exploits is a challenge in itself. You don’t want to make the wrong choice, especially when it comes to class. In theory the Titan is the meat-headed tank, the Hunter is the sneaky back-stabby type and the Warlock is the space wizard; but in practice their attributes are all very similar, and there are no restrictions in terms of weapons. Each class gets its own armour styles, though, so it really comes down to deciding which one you think looks more awesome – the Warlock’s long coats, the Hunter’s hoods and cloaks or the Titan’s Master Chief-like armour plating. The other stuff it influences is the type of double-jump you get, the sort of grenades you lob, and which ‘special’ you get to use when the yellow gauge fills up. For the Titan it’s a Hulk-smash, for the Warlock a massive magic grenade; the Hunter gets a golden gun that James Bond would envy. Each class does get a later sub-class, and you might find you need to perform a more specific role in your fireteam when it comes to tackling the nails-hard Raids, but for the majority of the game you can mix it up however you want.
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TEST GAMES
iOS / 2kgames.com
BioShock Can the classic ultra-immersive shooter survive being squeezed down to iPhone and iPad without losing its addictive soul? still vividly recall playing the original BioShock on Xbox 360, exploring the depths of its underwater fantasy setting, tensing up at the brash Big Daddy showdowns, and soaking in an eerie atmosphere unlike anything I’d ever played before. Would someone new to the game have that same kind of experience on a 4in touchscreen? The iPhone and iPad version thankfully keeps the BioShock experience intact, maintaining the incredible dystopian city of Rapture, with its gene-spliced enemies and terrifying armoured warriors, terrific art deco design and ever-intriguing narrative. That’s the best news of all – BioShock still feels original after all these years. The lack of physical inputs on iOS devices means big changes: thus, a virtual stick and buttons. By and large, it does the trick – the attacking buttons match the overall aesthetic well and are nicely laid out. But there’s a clumsiness to playing a shooter when all the
I
inputs you need aren’t resting right below a thumb or finger, and slowed reactions are bound to get you killed at some point. Luckily, BioShock supports MFi controllers, and that’s definitely the way to play. Even as an early last-gen release, this was one of the most visually stunning games ever… but it looks ragged in this incarnation. The models all have rough edges, textures are muddled, and lighting issues abound. The great original work isn’t lost, but it’s a bit more difficult to appreciate. BioShock has been around for seven years now, so it’s not hard to find cheaply for Xbox 360, PC or PS3. And indeed, every other version of the game is more polished and precise than this one. But still, phones and tablets are turning more players onto games than ever before and this is still a tremendous single-player shooter experience – one that’s solidly enjoyable with touch controls, but truly great with a gamepad. Andrew Hayward
The retro illustrations of the unlockable plasmid powers are as daft as ever. Cartoon violence!
Remember Pipe Mania? Hacking turrets, cameras and vending machines in BioShock is just like that
STUFF SAYS It’s not quite so slick on iOS, but BioShock still shines through ++++, 102
E ? SID ON SE U HO YO W RE A
he rt f o e ot le om n s i b g s a re a a l s on i n e se in s p s h W o o i m lp re u n . h c r h e is r, p tio ly c e d h n e a d ye t i n c m p r t a tra h x si , o se e c e o es u lif ea of u t ci ca ild l s ink yo pe the l w ma br ing d s to ga ni he sk ere ce ille of a to t e a ng voi r he s s a a r , t n d i e e n d ou ld a ec W e y or u s sp ey. lly dd w o a A e th ed on ic y. . t h of v m r i t e d d er t lo ur ’s c on en u n ht o s o l d r m n ro g m r y r o a A au ur fo wo m f to sl o g e e g o f s k i n : t h l l th i l l i n a e ki k s i d ho t h e w ut p
unitedforwildlife.org
DESIGN
See your hi S hi-tech t hh home in i a new light… with a new light. These are our favourite ultra-modern lamps [ Photography Pete Gardner ]
GASSLING OOPS I DROPPED THE BULB
We’re not sure what the returns policy is when you buy this Swedish lamp, but it’s unlikely Gassling will take it back if you claim it looks a bit broken. Its moment-of-impact design is deliberately 3D-printed in white nylon, while a 6W LED takes care of the actual lighting duties. Also available from Gassling’s website are a pair of ceiling lamps in similar style and a range of eco-friendly boxer shorts. We’re not sure about the returns policy on those either. €400 / gassling.com
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DESIGN NORTHERN LIGHTING DIVA Swedish furniture is so last week. If you really want to put the ‘in’ in interior design, you need to direct your glance to its nordic neighbour, Norway. The Scandinavian kingdom’s design council saw fit to bestow its award for design excellence on the 1.2m-tall Diva floor lamp, no doubt inspired by its striking feminine figure. Either that, or the judging panel were afraid the artful ninja who carved it would turn his katana on them in their beds. They have ninjas in Norway, right? £1755 / northernlighting.no
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DESIGN QISDESIGN CORAL
Should your decorative tastes extend to the maritime, the Coral lamp is designed to look a bit like, well, a coral. Its glassy diffusers mimic the diaphanous polyps of everyone’s favourite reef-dwelling intervertebrate, creating a peaceful luminescence to accompany your whale-song playlist while you try to forget about the hammerhead sharks, decompression sickness and other innumerable perils of the deep. For maximum effect, paint the walls blue and wear neoprene trousers and a pair of flippers. £280 / lampled.co.uk
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DESIGN
ANDROMEDA: TACTICAL LIGHTING
If you’re unsure why anyone would want to design the “world’s first military-inspired tactical tri-rail lamp” that “fully utilizes the Picatinny rail system”, the Andromeda might not be your first choice of light. If, like the 384 people who backed its Kickstarter campaign, you think it would be ‘epic’, ‘badass’ and ‘awesome’ to mount a thermal sight to your bedside light, look no further. But do contemplate the irony of fitting night vision to a lamp. US$560 / sketchydesignstudio. bigcartel.com
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DESIGN
KIRSTY SHAW CIRCULAR LAYERED TABLE LAMP
This literally-named bit of lightware throws out colourful arcs in every direction, even redistributing beams of sunlight caught by its stack of brightly-hued acrylic discs. Should you need further persuasion before dropping a hundred notes, it can also double up as a space-age plate rack or be used as set dressing if you happen to be a Dr Who director from the mid-’80s. Practicality forbids these bonus features being included in the name. £100 / notonthehighstreet.com/ kirstyshaw
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DESIGN
AMINIMAL FIELD LAMP
Although the Field Lamp looks at first glance like it’s just come back from a visit to Janet Street-Porter’s stylist, there’s method in its mad mess of curvy acrylic tendrils. They represent the magnetosphere – the invisible magnetic field surrounding the Earth. Granted, it’s unlikely the soft incandescence of the Field Lamp will protect you from solar winds and cosmic rays in the same way, but it does create a pleasant shading effect. Which is something at least. US$450 / aminimalstudio.com
THE LIGHTS THAT NEVER GO OUT: LAMP CLASSICS
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O Lava lamp 1963
O Anglepoise 1932
O Emeralite 1901
O Tiffany lamp approx 1895
Invented by Edward Craven Walker, the Lava lamp is still in production (in the UK) over 50 years later. For best results draw the tie-dyed curtains and light a patchouli joss stick.
Designed by George Carwardine, the iconic Anglepoise was banned by BBC bosses who felt people working in spotlit solitude would produce smuttier programming.
The classic ‘banker’s lamp’ is the bowler hat and pinstripe suit of the lighting world. It’s often used in TV and film sets to describe the administrative nature of a workplace.
Louis Comfort Tiffany was once thought to have come up with these timelessly ornate stained glass and lead lamps, but it later transpired that Clara Driscoll was the real creative spark.
G R O U P T E S T B A R G A I N B LO W E R S
5 OF THE BEST
Sub-£150 smartphones Forget pixelly screens, sluggish web speeds and Etch-a-Sketch cameras: you can now get a reliable all-rounder on a titchy budget
BEST FOR... YOUR FIRST PHONE
Nokia Lumia 630 Price £90 / nokia.com What’s that? In a sea of cheap Androids, the Lumia 630 stands out like an alien: a neon orange buoy keeping Windows Phone fans safe from ridicule. It’s essentially a bigger version of 2013’s Lumia 520 with the latest 8.1 software. Sure, Android has more games and the 630 is far from the highest-specced device here, but this Nokia gets a lot right. The battery life is the best for the money – not by much, but the 630 will give you an extra hour or so over the rest. It’s the lightest at 134g, and comes with a decent (if low-res) screen and excellent freebies including Nokia Drive.
Any good? Windows Phone 8.1 is friendlier than stock KitKat for beginners,
and now it also has useful Android-style features and settings. Even the 5MP camera has its moments – it’s no Lumia 1020 but the outdoor and macro shots look great and low-light images aren’t the grainiest we’ve ever encountered. The 630 is a little slow in use next to the likes of the Moto G but it’s easy to forgive that at this low price. If you can’t live without 4G, try the similar (but around £50 more expensive) Lumia 635. Tech 4.5in 854x480 (221ppi) O1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400, 512MB RAM O5MP 720p rear, no front camera O1830mAh O8GB (plus up to 128GB with microSD) Ono 4G O129.5x66.7x9.2mm O134g
STUFF SAYS Cheap, cheerful but outclassed by the budget Androids ++++, 113
G R O U P T E S T B A R G A I N B LO W E R S
EE Kestrel Price £100 / ee.co.uk What’s that? 4G has been out of reach for anyone on a tight smartphone budget. Until now. With 4G, a big battery and quad-core power, EE’s Kestrel is no run-of-the-mill smartphone. Available for just £100 outright, or £14 a month, this tweaked and rebranded 4.5in Huawei handset might tempt you ahead of the Moto G 4G. But while the Kestrel ticks one box usually reserved for phones two or three times the price, it makes a few compromises in the name of low-budget connectivity.
BEST FOR... 4G FUN
Any good? For starters, it lacks the lovely HD screen and smooth performance of the top Moto. It also has the most retro design of the bunch, in terms of both hardware and
its Emotion UI software. Still, the battery life is brilliant (it’ll last an awesome 12 hours of regular usage), unlike some, plus it has both an OK front camera – as long as you avoid night-time shots – and a rear flash. It’s light at 145g and seriously slim: at 7.85mm it makes handsets like the Moto E and Lumia 630 look and feel very chunky. The fastest browsing and streaming this side of £150, then, but not quite the full package. Tech 4.5in 540x960 (245ppi) O1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400, 1GB RAM O5MP 720p rear, 1MP front O2000mAh O4GB (plus up to 32GB with microSD) O4G O131x65.3x 7.85mm O145g
STUFF SAYS The cheapest for 4G, but there are better all-rounders ++++,
Moto E Price £90 / motorola.co.uk What’s that? Tech-lovers on a sub-£100 budget may finally have a solution. Serving up a tidy, reliable, loveable Android for the masses, the 4.3in Moto E is your best bet for under a ton. Its compact and sturdy build, slick performance and close-tostock Android OS impress, with only the quality of its 5MP camera, the miserly 4GB of storage and the lack of a front cam letting it down majorly.
though lower-res than that of the Moto G 4G opposite, is still a cracker, with apps, games and webpages all looking lovely. Its main flaw is its camera, but we find that most handsets under £200 disappoint in this department. Motorola really has the monopoly on value brilliance, so if you’re just after a dirt-cheap device or even a second handset, you should look no further.
BEST FOR... YOUR WALLET
Any good? The 1980mAh battery isn’t swappable and will conk out an hour before most here, but it still comfortably lasts a day of light use, and there are swappable Motorola Shell covers to keep the design feel fresh. The screen,
Tech 4.3in 540x960 (256ppi) O1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 200, 1GB RAM O5MP 480p rear, no front camera O1980mAh O4GB (plus up to 32GB with microSD) Ono 4G O124.8x64.8x12.3mm O142g
STUFF SAYS This is the best smartphone you can buy under £100 ++++, 114
G R O U P T E S T B A R G A I N B LO W E R S
Moto G 4G Price £150 / motorola.co.uk What’s that? The 2013 Moto G is now ludicrously cheap, but 4G makes this new model ever better. It’s sturdily built and fits snugly in one hand, while swappable Shells give you the option to customise its look on a daily basis. The 4.5in, HD, 326ppi screen is the real selling point over its fuzzier-screened rivals. Next to most other phones in its class it looks pin-sharp, with vivid but natural colours and good contrast.
BEST FOR... ALL-ROUND CLASS
T TES R E NN I W
everything run smoothly and you can can expect speedy downloads, streaming and browsing over 4G. The best bit? The Moto G still lasts a day between charges. If you have specific criteria – let’s say you’re a n00b who likes the look of Windows Phone, or taking pics is your priority – then other budget phones in this test might make more sense. But for most, the G will do very nicely indeed.
Any good? It’s not without problems – the 5MP camera does still disappoint sometimes, especially in low light. Moto’s also left the 4G with an almost untouched version of Android KitKat, adding a few genuinely useful features but nothing more. That helps
Tech 4.5in 1280x720 (326ppi) with Gorilla Glass O1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400, 1GB RAM O5MP 720p rear, 1.3MP 720p front O2070mAh O8GB (plus up to 32GB with microSD) O4G O129.9x65.9x11.6mm O143g
STUFF SAYS Fantastic and futureproof, it’s budget phone perfection +++++
Sony Xperia M2 Price £150/ sony.co.uk What’s that? Until the new 5in Kogan Agora 4G turns up, the Xperia M2 is the best way to get a big screen on a budget. Its blocky plastic design, available in purple, white and black, is based on the high-end Xperia Z2. Performance is much better than previous mid-range Sony phones and battery life is pretty good. Plus Sony has thrown in extras you won’t find on other cheap blowers: small apps, stamina mode for the battery, and a pulsing notification light to last over a day of use.
Any good? The 8MP camera is the highlight here. AF can be a little sluggish but it’s easy to use, with Sony’s quick Superior Auto mode plus
lots of settings to dig into and reliably good 1080p video. It doesn’t get close to the top smartphones for picture quality, but it’s the best all-round snapper tested here. It’s just a shame that 4.8in screen isn’t very sharp at 229ppi and suffers from poor viewing angles. If Sony had stuck a higher-res screen on the M2 and added support for 4G, this would have been more of a rival for the Moto G. As it is, it falls just short.
BEST FOR... CAMERA STILLS
Tech 4.8in 540x960 (229ppi) O1.2GHz quad-core Qualcomm Snapdragon 400, 1GB RAM O8MP 1080p rear, VGA front O2330mAh O8GB (plus up to 32GB with microSD) Ono 4G O139.6x71.1x 8.6mm O148g
STUFF SAYS Fine features and camera; only the screen lets it down ++++, 115
REVIEWS
Sensory snacks From vampires to kittens, your Stuff-scrutinised rundown of this month’s key releases in film, music and books
WATCH
’71_cinema ost people don’t think of Northern Ireland as a former war zone: “You’re not even leaving the country,” an officer tells young Private Gary Hook (Starred Up’s Jack O’Connell) before his regiment is deployed to Belfast a year before the events of Bloody Sunday. But when a routine house search gets out of hand and Hook finds himself stranded alone in the wrong part of the city, he’s very much on the frontline and in a dangerous and unfamiliar world. When both friend and foe look like they’ve stepped off the set of a Bee Gees video, Hook struggles to fully trust anyone but himself. When he befriends a young boy and is unable to tell the junior streetfighter whether
M
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he’s Catholic or Protestant, Hook’s complete ignorance of the situation is exposed. It’s a dark and claustrophobic film, shot frequently on handheld cameras and often lit by nothing more than streetlights and burning cars, with the shadows used like it’s a horror movie. But as the night unfolds and we discover there’s more to ’71 than just a good guy lost in a bad part of town, the tension is ramped up. It soon becomes clear that a war’s a war, even when it’s on your doorstep, and those at the bottom of the chain of command always come off worse, no matter which side you’re on. Tom Wiggins
Vampires have had a rough ride in recent years, but Jim Jarmusch isn’t interested in all that teen/sexy nonsense. His approach, contemplative yet quirky, is entirely compatible with Tom Hiddleston and Tilda Swinton’s offbeat turns as Adam and Eve. Vampires haven’t felt so fresh or fun in decades. This is how you rescue a genre. Ced Yuen
Godzilla’s humans are mostly run-of-the-mill action movie tropes, but the monster, the sound and the camera itself have enough presence to make this a brilliant film: the eerie scene in which a group of soldiers skydive into the ruined city is a really exceptional piece of movie-making. Will Dunn
STUFF SAYS ++++,
STUFF SAYS +++++
STUFF SAYS +++++
Only Lovers Left Alive_DVD
Godzilla _DVD, Blu-ray
REVIEWS
LISTEN
You’re Dead!_Flying Lotus As chief purveyor of LA hipster-hop and the great nephew of sax legend John Coltrane, it’s no surprise that Steven Ellison, aka Flying Lotus, has gradually let jazz influences creep into his music. While You’re Dead! isn’t pure hard bop or fusion, it delves further into that world than any of his previous four albums. Prince would be proud of how the guitars are made to wail but vocal appearances from
Kendrick Lamar, Snoop Dogg and Ellison’s own Captain Murphy alter ego ensure things are still rooted in electronicatinged hip-hop, with his trademark Dilla-inspired woozy beats never more than a bebop away. Arguably FlyLo’s most cohesive record to date – and you don’t need a beard or a pipe to dig it. Tom Wiggins STUFF SAYS ++++,
Our Love
Playland
_Caribou
_Johnny Marr
READ
Kitten Clone_Douglas Coupland The three things that keep people interested in the internet are humour, kittens in baskets and porn. Cultural chin-scratcher Douglas Coupland uses two of them in this entertaining yet alarming analysis of online life, which asks just what universal connectedness has done to the human mind. Triffic, a bald Canadian moaning that kids these days have no attention span… but Kitten Clone sniffs deeper
Storm_Tim Minchin, DC Turner and Tracy King
down than that. Based on informal interviews with assorted hyper-nerds from the Alcatel-Lucent corporation, and illustrated with melancholy pictures of their offices around the world, this short book sometimes feels every bit as chaotic and directionless as the web itself – but its central thesis is quietly apocalyptic. Richard Purvis STUFF SAYS ++++,
Lock In _John Scalzi
With David Guetta, Avicii et al doing their best to spoil 30 years of dance music, it’s nice to have Dan Snaith fighting back. Although his fourth album as Caribou isn’t all for the dancefloor, Silver’s Vangelis-esque synths give way to some bassier, more old-skool sounds. Our Love will be the sound of your second summer. Tom Wiggins
This is contemporary guitar pop with a tinge of electro-goth menace. Judged as such, without mentioning or even thinking about… y’know, that band he used to be in… Marr’s second solo album is pretty decent. So here’s a 50-year-old showing the kids how it’s done; the only question is whether it really needs doing. Richard Purvis
Comedian Tim Minchin’s graphic novel – based on a dinner-party argument with a hippy – makes the case for rationality; his opponent waffles on about auras and homeopathy. The writing’s sharp and the artwork pops, though you’ll whizz through it in less time than it takes to listen to the original poem. Steven Graves
The sci-fi detective genre has more than its fair share of classics, from The Demolished Man to Dirk Gently. This is good enough to sit with the best of them, fitting a pandemic, a seemingly unsolvable murder and a pair of cops, one of whom lives via a telelpresence robot, into a weekend’s fast-paced and highly engaging reading. Will Dunn
STUFF SAYS ++++,
STUFF SAYS +++,,
STUFF SAYS +++,,
STUFF SAYS ++++,
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It takes two, baby for true stereo sound.
Unlike docks and soundbars, the Q Media BT3 from Q Acoustics delivers real stereo sound separation via its versatile twin bookshelf speakers. “ ...the sound these speakers make will knock any similarly priced soundbars into a cocked hat” “ Few products are as versatile and easy to use as the Q BT3s“ “ Proper hi-fi sound and a huge boost to TV, Computer and streaming sound.” WHAT HI-FI? SOUND AND VISION
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HOME CINEMA CHOICE
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PROJECTS MAKE. DO. UPGRADE.
p122 BETA YOURSELF: COOKING
p124 PLAYLIST: PODCASTS
Urgent message from your oesophagus: No more fish fingers
Entertain your ears while your eyes are stuck in the real world
p126 INSTANT UPGRADES: FIREWORKS
p128 RE-AWESOMISE YOUR… CHROMEBOOK
Make sure there’s an “ahhhh!” for every “oooh!”
Get more from that little slice of laptoppy love
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PROJECTS | 11.14 BETA YOURSELF
COOKING Are you a walking kitchen nightmare? Les Dunn, managing editor of food magazine delicious, shares a few tricks that might make even Monica Galetti crack a smile
QStay sharp. Hone your
THE BASICS
blade on a ceramic steel before every use. Don’t let anyone else do it – a blade adjusts to your sharpening pattern with biometric precision, and a different hand might blunt it.
QInvest in heavy-based pans. Cheap, thin-based pans cook your food unevenly and their inferno-like hotspots make it easier to burn food. Quality kit such as Meyer Circulon Infinite pans (from £20, lakeland.co.uk) will last for years and years.
QUse tongs for control. Half the frustration in cooking comes from things sticking or not going where you want them to (damn you, sausages!). Tongs are like an extra, asbestos-coated hand.
QReach for the big knife. Your cook’s knife, with its 20cm blade, isn’t just for carving
chickens. It’s the fastest tool for slicing or chopping anything, from a joint of beef to a clove of garlic.
QCook for enjoyment. Fine dining is about prissily trimming off perfectly good bits of meat, or moulding food in steel rings. Don’t waste time on all that cheffy stuff – concentrate on flavour.
QDon’t Google it! Well, don’t Google indiscriminately. When you’re looking for a particular recipe, always use a trusted source. Food magazines such as delicious (others are available) test every recipe they publish and tweak them until they’re foolproof. There are thousands of recipes available online for free, but finding a good one is like choosing tomatoes: have a good sniff first.
THE SKILLS QHoning your blades. Hold the steel upright on a chopping board then run the blade across it towards you, fairly lightly, 10 times. Repeat on the other side.
QProper chopping. Put a damp J-cloth under the board so it can’t slide around. Keep the tip of the knife on the board as you smoothly move the handle up and back, then down and forward, through the food.
QCheat’s mixing. ‘Folding in’ with a spoon is tricky – use a balloon whisk, lifting and turning slowly. The tiny surface area means you lose very little air.
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11.14 | PROJECTS LEVEL UP WITH...
SORTED FOOD £free / iOS This lot started mucking around with cookery videos to help save their fellow students from living on junk food. Refreshingly unpretentious, they’ve since rocked the food world with their YouTube channel; the new app has 700-plus recipes, with the option of uploading your own masterpieces.
McGEE ON FOOD & COOKING £26 / bookdepository.com With his classic, weighty 1984 tome, Harold McGee was the first to take a properly scientific approach to cooking. The much-revised 2004 edition is even better. Read it, and when naive friends in the pub regurgitate stale myths such as “Searing the meat seals in the juices”, you’ll have hours of fun debunking them.
THE INGREDIENTS QVeg boxes. Don’t worry, they won’t turn you into a hippy. Veg-forward cookery is big now, and a weekly consignment of seasonal British produce (from £10.35/week, riverford.co.uk) will help you join the revolution. QThe specialist site. All out of yuzu powder? souschef.co.uk is a one-stop shop for hard-to-find ingredients, ideal when your local supermarket lets you down.
QThe lifesaving book. The Flavour Thesaurus by Niki Segnit lists 99 popular ingredients with possible flavour matches: bingo, odds and ends become recipes.
GRIDDLE THE PERFECT STEAK QBuy a top-quality steak: 225g, British, dry-aged ribeye. Leave out of the fridge for half an hour. Get your griddle pan hot.
QBrush the steak with oil,
NOW ADD THESE… QKitchenAid Artisan Mixer. The first time you make pizzas, you’ll love all that kneading; the 20th time, you’ll wish you could just chuck it all into a machine. £400 / ecookshop.co.uk
season well and place on the griddle, oiled side down. Cook for 2 mins, pressing to get the lines. Oil and season the top, turn and cook for 2 mins more.
QLakeland Digital Thermometer. Many recipes
QMeanwhile, warm a plate
QTefal Jamie Oliver Clipso Pressure Cooker. The cheaper
in the microwave for 1 min. Rest your steak on the plate for 5-10 mins so the muscle cells relax and the meat becomes more tender and juicy. Enjoy.
use precise temperatures; don’t rely on folksy guesswork methods. £20 / lakeland.co.uk
cuts of meat have great flavour but take hours to slow-cook… unless you have one of these. £120 / hartsofstur.com
THE SCHOOL OF ARTISAN FOOD 1-day courses from £145 / schoolofartisanfood.org Doing it from scratch, whether it’s curing meat or crafting your own yogurt and cheese, is what it’s all about for the contemporary food obsessive. This respected college on a country estate in Sherwood Forest can teach you all the traditional skills.
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PLAYLIST
PODCASTS
Whether you fancy nipping out for a ‘learn-walk’, an ‘edu-stroll’ or a bit of ‘runtertainment’, we’ve picked the best shows for those terrifying times when you don’t have access to a screen
RETRONAUTS If you want a retro gaming listening alternative to YouTube’s ‘Let’s Play’ videos, this podcast will look after your 8- and 16-bit needs. It verges on the nerdy at times, and it’s lengthy – but as an exploration of brilliant games from a bygone era, there’s nothing to beat it. retronauts.com
GUARDIAN FOOTBALL WEEKLY A world away from the blustery, loud-mouthed world of sports-focused radio, the always amusing James Richardson and his highly knowledgeable guests offer the sort of witty, analysis-based view of the game that’s seemingly impossible to find anywhere else. theguardian.com
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RADIOLAB Science and philosophy are the chief concerns of this show from New York public station WNYC, but it’s certainly not dry or exclusive: compelling stories, tight editing and the use of experimental music keep things moving swiftly. For a taster, listen to the ‘Radiolab shorts’ episodes. radiolab.org
THE MCP Movie geeks should set aside a few hours to catch up with the Motion/Captured Podcast, a lengthy and well-informed dive into the world of film hosted by screenwriter and journalist Drew McWeeny and his writing partner Scott Swan. An insightful, insider’s view of Hollywood. iTunes
FREAKONOMICS The podcast of the bestselling book, Freakonomics digs into the world from an economist’s point of view. This means answering a range of questions – Does religion make you happy? What’s the best exercise? Should tipping be banned? – in a surprisingly enthralling way. freakonomics.com/ radio/
STUFF YOU SHOULD KNOW Did you know that the male pillow octopus sometimes breaks off one of his arms to use as a sword against bigger fish? We didn’t either, until we started listening to a pair of American bloggers who like to talk about absolutely everything under the sun. stuffyoushouldknow. com
WELCOME TO NIGHT VALE Twin Peaks fan? Tune into fictional tales of a small desert town, told through the medium of a radio broadcast. Drily, darkly humorous, its news, weather and bizarre adverts create a vivid picture of a place where weirdness is ordinary. commonplacebooks. com/welcome-tonight-vale
11.14 PROJECTS
NOW ADD THESE... You can’t podcastulate your brain with the wrong tools. Get the following and start reshaping your ideas-gland
JABRA ROX WIRELESS You’re going to be spending gigahours listening to all this great content, so you’re going to need many ways to listen… like these liberatingly diminutive Bluetooth earphones, which have five hours of battery life. £100, jabra.co.uk
PODKICKER
UNDER THE RADAR If you wondered what had happened to ’90s TV comedy stalwart Sean ‘Sean’s Show’ Hughes, wonder no longer: he’s now hosting this witty, sharp and laid-back podcast, in which we find him in conversation with a guest or guests from the world of entertainment and comedy. soundcloud.com
SODAJERKER ON SONGWRITING Sodajerker are Scouse songwriting duo Simon Barber and Brian O’Connor who, when they’re not locked in a studio, make this fascinating podcast on the art of songcraft. Most episodes feature the pair picking the brains of a musician such as Loudon Wainwright III or Billy Bragg. sodajerker.com
BLUE JAM Created by Brass Eye’s Chris Morris and broadcast on Radio 1 in the late ’90s during the early hours of the morning, this mix of surreal comedy sketches and ambient soundscapes was unlike anything that had ever been (or ever would be) broadcast on mainstream radio. archive.org
ALL SONGS CONSIDERED From the non-profit cultural titan NPR, this weekly offering in the style of a radio show is a great way to keep up to date with what’s going on in indie music. Featuring track premieres, it’s a must for any muso who knows their Ariel Pink from their Air Supply. npr.org
Apple’s own Podcasts app is pretty handy, but if you’re an Android user the podcast-listening app is less obvious. Podkicker is pretty good as standard; the 69p Pro version adds goodies and removes display ads. from £free, play.google.com
SAMSON METEORITE CONDENSER MICROPHONE Inspired? You needn’t buy a mic to start recording your own mind-splurge, but it’ll vastly improve matters if you do. Equally, you needn’t buy one as pretty as this one… but just look at it! £40, samsontech.com
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6 INSTANT UPGRADES FIREWORKSNIGHT What better way to christen your new back garden than with a neighbour-annoying, dog-bothering pyrotechnics extravaganza? Warning: may emit sparks of sensationalness
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[ Illustration Jamie Sneddon ]
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11.14 | PROJECTS PYROTECHNIC PAPPING
Your guests are on their way, the emergency water bucket is on standby, you’ve set up your camera (see panel) and the fireworks are ready to launch... but what’s that smell? Uh-oh, you’ve boiled the mulled wine into a foul-tasting soup again. This six-litre soup kettle is the perfect set-and-forget option. In stainless steel with a variable thermostat, it means you’ll never end up with horrible boiled wine again. Also good for those ‘six litres of soup’ Sundays. £80 / nisbets.co.uk
4 XSORIES WEYE FEYE If you want to photograph your fireworks, the best views aren’t likely to be from the safest places. Solution: the Weye Feye – pronounced like Wi-Fi – hooks up to your Nikon or Canon DSLR (there’s an ‘S’ version coming soon that works with most cameras) and provides live view and remote shooting controls on your smartphone or tablet via its own Wi-Fi network. The built-in battery gives up to eight hours of use and it works up to 80m away, so you can get your camera up close without putting yourself in the line of fire. £200 / xsories.co.uk
2 LAUNCH KONTROL PULSE Why would you stumble around a muddy garden in the dark when you could set off your fireworks at the push of a button? The Launch Kontrol Pulse is a simple wired system that can be used up to 20m away. Replaceable ignition tips clip to the firework fuses, and the pad is connected via a Cat 5 network cable and powered by a 9V battery. Up to four fireworks can be triggered per board, and you can chain multiple boards together for bigger displays. £17 / pyrostation.co.uk
5 FIREWORKS INTERNATIONAL TOMAHAWK ROCKETS Every good display needs a fine set of rockets to round it off. This bargain pack of five Fireworks International Tomahawks is just the job. With two dazzling effects – Silver Glittering Willow and the rather cocktail-sounding Green Crackling Coconut with Pistil Purple Peony – they’re the perfect showstoppers. You’ll finally be able to shake off the stigma of that time you disappointed everyone with a mouldy box of Roman candles. £20 / pyro.co.uk
3 BRAVEN BRV-1 If you’re feeling really creative, you could always set your fireworks display to music. Ready to provide the soundtrack is the BRV-1. It’s a compact Bluetooth speaker built to withstand the testing conditions of a cold, damp November night thanks to its IPX5 water-resistant rating and rugged rubber exterior. Its twin drivers can manage 3W each of power and offer a playing time of up to 12 hours. It also has a built-in noise-cancelling mic for hands-free calling… although it’s probably best not to try that while the sky is exploding. £130 / braven.eu
6 HUSQVARNA TECHNICAL GLOVES You need sturdy gloves that will keep your fingers safe without being too bulky for fiddling with fuses. While they’re designed for use with Husqvarna chainsaws, these are also light enough to allow full movement, with a tough yet supple goat-leather palm, extra protection for the index finger and a terry-cloth panel for wiping away your excitement-induced sweat. The snug Velcro closure makes sure they stay put, and reflective piping makes them easier to find if you drop one in the dark. £39 / husqvarna.com
LONG EXPOSURE If you’re using a DSLR, select manual and focus on infinity. Keep the ISO at 100, set the aperture to around f/12 and try exposures up to 30 secs. If you’re using a compact camera, select night mode (no flash) or fireworks mode if it has one.
TIME-LAPSE If you want to record the whole thing, you can compress an entire fireworks display into a 15-second clip. Many cameras have a time-lapse mode, or you can use apps such as Lapse It (from £free / iOS, Android).
EXPERIMENT Feeling ambitious? Try getting reflections, silhouettes of spectators… or use flash in a group shot with long exposure to catch background fireworks. With care, you could even use a drone to capture an aerial view.
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[ Photos f ckr com/n ckwhee eroz f ckr com/gotovan f ckr com/caoma youtube com/goprocamera ]
1 DUALIT STRAIGHT SOUP KETTLE
TRIPOD An essential. Decide what angle you want to capture and set up your camera on a tripod to keep it steady. You can even use the Weye Feye (see no.4, left) to see exactly what your camera sees and fire off shots without shaking it.
PROJECTS | 11.14
5 RE-AWESOMISE YOUR CHROMEBOOK
WAYS TO...
More than a tablet but not quite a laptop, Chromebooks are difficult to define but easy to love. There’s also a lot more to them than you might realise – here’s how to make yours truly tremendous…
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Use it to control other PCs
Beef up its storage
Chrome Remote Desktop Google’s Chrome Remote Desktop, which lets you take control of a PC via the browser (you can also do this from an Android phone), allows you to outsource tougher processing tasks to your desktop, remotely control software or use it as a media server for your telly. £free / chrome. google.com
Transcend 128GB Superspeed If you’ve not got the guts to open up your machine and replace the internal storage, all is not yet lost. Thanks to the magic of superfast USB 3.0 data transfers, an SSD-based external drive is almost as good as an internal one these days. And they’re not too expensive either: perfect for your film collection. £100 / amazon.co.uk
4 Make it a digital darkroom Pixlr Editor, Pixlr Touch Up Both of these photo-editing apps work offline. Pixlr Touch Up is fairly basic but Pixlr Editor is more of a Photoshop-esque experience. You’ll see a File menu appear, giving you menus to trace, feather, layer, filter, clone and so on. It’s not going to kill Adobe in the near future, but it’s free. £free / chrome. google.com
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Give it the joy of Ubuntu Crouton Missing a ‘proper’ operating system? Because Chrome OS is built on Linux, Crouton can install Ubuntu Linux (and even Android, for advanced tinkerers) alongside Chrome OS. It takes some fiddling (and for Pete’s sake back up first) and it can be slow on older ARM processors, but flies on Celeron models. £free / github.com/ dnschneid/crouton
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5 Save the internet for later Pocket Chromebooks have been improving their offline prowess (see below), but there are still rare moments when you’re lost without a connection. Install Pocket and use the button to save any webpage you find useful, and when you open the smart offline app on your Chromebook it’ll all be there. £free / getpocket.com
GO OFFLINE In the early days of Chromebooks, they needed an internet
connection to do anything, but there are now hundreds of apps – including Gmail, Docs, games and video and photo editors – that work offline.
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11.14 | PROJECTS
G A D G E T D O C T O R
ALWAYS ON CALL facebook.com/joinstuff O @stuffTV
google.com/+stufftv O
[email protected]
MAIL OF THE MONTH Q
THE YOUNG ONES
I recently dipped my toe into the murky waters of crowdfunding and am lucky enough to be getting one of the first new Pono hi-res music players that Neil Young launched on Kickstarter. I can’t just plug in my cheapo earbuds so the challenge now is to find a pair of headphones that’ll do it justice
in terms of sound reproduction. Can you help me, Stuff? John Bramm We reckon a music player backed by Neil Young requires suitably vintage-looking cans to plug into it, Brammers, so that gives us a couple of obvious options. The first is a pair of B&W P7s (£330, bowers-wilkins.co.uk)
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but, to be honest, we’d go for the ultimate in retro chic: Grado’s SR325e (£300, gradolabs.com). No doubt Neil would approve of the old-skool design, and we’re certain he’d like how they sound. Have a Qobuz subscription to bolster your collection of hi-res audio. Perhaps they’ve got some Neil Young.
Speak your brains and you could win a 6-month QOBUZ HIFI SUBSCRIPTION worth £120 This letter wins 6 months of unlimited streaming in lossless-quality FLAC from Qobuz, worth £20/month
Q
MOBILE HONE
I like gaming on my Galaxy Note 3 while I’m out and about to kill time, but I hate touchscreen controls. I’m too much of a casual gamer to blow cash on a PS Vita, so I’m looking to get a Bluetooth controller that lasts for long journeys without feeling small and tacky. Any suggestions? Christopher Braithwaite The Moga Pro Power (£65, mogaanywhere.com) is probably your best bet. It’s around the same size as a console controller so it’s not as portable as its rivals, but it’s more comfortable to use – with useful features including a built-in clip that supports your phone while you play. It’s even got a large battery that can juice up your phone while you’re out.
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Q
DRIVE SAFELY
After two years my MacBook Pro is getting full up with videos, music and photos but I need everything. A portable hard drive is no good as I actually use my laptop on my lap quite a bit and I’m scared of losing one. Do I have to get cloud storage? Ragu Mitha No, Ragu, far from it. Sounds like you’re crying out for a Nifty MiniDrive (€35, minidrive. bynifty.com). It’s a microSD adapter that slots snugly into your MBP’s SD card slot so you needn’t trust your extra gigabytes to a wired accessory. Pair it with SanDisk’s 128GB microSD and your vids, tunes and snaps will be safer than files wrapped in real cotton wool clouds.
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COMFORT CANS
I’m looking for something that’ll let me listen to my music and the radio in bed, without disturbing my other half. In-ear headphones dig into my lugholes when on my side, and good luck getting to sleep with a pair of on-ears clamped over your head. Rob Shirland
There are a few speakerequipped pillows out there, but they tend to be a) mono and b) audible to anyone else in the bed. We like SleepPhones (£35, firebox.com) – they’re a soft headband with flat speakers that you can lie on comfortably, available in wired and Bluetooth flavours. You’ll be drifting off to Einstürzende Neubauten in no time.
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CALL MY BUFFER
I’ve recently started my own business, which pretty much means I’ve given up on sleeping ever again. I know social media is essential to build up my brand, but I don’t have time to constantly update my profiles. Is there an Android app I can use to schedule tweets and Facebook posts? Sarah Wheeler There certainly is, Sarah. Try Buffer, which allows you to form a queue of updates to be posted throughout the day, plus you can access analytics to
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see which times of day get you most eyeballs.
Q
JUST CHILLIN’
I’m going to Antarctica in December to spend a month clubbing seals (not really – I’m researching ice cores). I want a camera that won’t die of cold and will survive being dropped for less than £300. Simon Morrissey You’re in luck, Mozza. We tested three tough cams last month, with the Nikon Coolpix AW120 our favourite. It can survive down to -10°C, handle drops of up to 2m, and will set you back a mere £250. It even has a compass so you can record the locations of all those core samples…
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PROJECTS | 11.14 5-MINUTE HACKS
IF NOTHING ELSE, AT LEAST...
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…CONQUER EVEREST
… GIVE YOUTUBE A FACELIFT
Hordes of climbers have struggled to defeat the big old ‘Sagarmatha’. Luckily, this simulation lets you do it in your dressing gown:
Tired of faffing with the same old YouTube settings? Fancy giving it the Ambilight treatment? Time to wave this internet wand:
1. Go to everestavalanchetragedy.com and click on ‘Mount Everest in 3D’. Don your warmest cardigan and hit ‘Start the climb’.
1. Go to chromeactions.com and add the Magic Actions extension to your Chrome, Firefox or Opera browser. All done? Off we go to YouTube.
2. For the most bone-chilling experience, put on some headphones to experience an icy wind as you climb through the perilous Khumbu Icefall (complete with rescue mission radio) and beyond.
2. What’s this underneath the video window? It’s a lovely new menu bar. Here you’ll find shortcuts for auto-repeat and filters, but for the really good stuff click on Magic Options.
3. Made the summit? Brew a well-deserved cuppa and explore your panoramic view, before heading to the ‘donate now’ section to raise money for the Sherpa Family Fund.
TUNE IN NEXT MONTH TO...
3. This list of handy tweaks includes Auto HD, Stop Autoplay and the rather useful Ratings Preview, which puts a rating bar in each video’s thumbnail so you can decide if it’s worthy of your click.
O Sharpen your stargazing O Find online services worth subscribing to O Clue up on arcade machines
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…AWESOMISE YOUR TEXTS The poor old text message looks a bit 1997 in the age of FaceTime. Spruce texts up with these GIF messaging apps: 1. Download Ultratext (£free, iOS). Type away, pressing the spacebar every time you want a new frame in your text GIF. 2. Press the camera icon to insert a photo, and touch the colour wheel to change your font and background colours. Press return to get a preview. 3. Want to film a Vine-like GIF? Download Camoji (£free, iOS), gurn into your front-facing camera and send that for good measure. Mind double-blown.
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TOP TEN Smartphones Tablets Hi-fi streaming Headphones Home cinema
Blu-ray / Speaker systems PVRs
TVs Laptops Best of the rest Home computers Sat-nav / Camcorders
Games Games machines Compact cameras Digital SLRs Geek accessories Wearable tech Connected home
132 133 134 135 138
140 142 143 144 145 146 147 148 150 151
For full reviews of every product in the top 10s, visit stuff.tv/reviews
SMARTPHONES
T HO Y BU
LG G3
While we hoped the G3 would continue the great work started by the G2, we weren’t expecting it to be quite so much of a leap forward. Upgrades range from little touches such as the sleeker back buttons to major changes such as the bigger, better 2K screen and laser-assisted camera. The only thing that isn’t better is the battery life, but considering all that LG has crammed into the G3, the fact that it still lasts 15hrs is to be applauded.
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HTC One M8
Only just toppled by the new LG, HTC’s flagship phone has enough power to take it to the top of the AnTuTu benchmarks. It’s a beaut to look at and to use, and it’s even got a whole load of Lytro-style post-snap refocus features for photographic fun.
OnePlus One
Believe the hype. To get one of the best smartphones on the planet, you don’t need £500 or £40 a month any more. You just need an invite. In terms of design, performance, screen and battery life you simply can’t get better than this for anywhere near £300.
LG G2
Its 5.2in screen is razor-sharp, its Snapdragon 800 processor handles demanding tasks with ease and its 13MP camera takes amazing photos. Good enough – and cheap enough – to keep its top-four place despite the arrival of the G3.
Samsung Galaxy S5
Big, bold and stuffed with tech, the Galaxy S5 is a bona fide superphone that will delight Samsung fans, although it has some very stiff competition. It has a faster processor, a slightly bigger screen and a more solid (if not quite stylish) feel than the S4.
Sony Xperia Z2
Classy, clever and with talent in spades, the water-resistant Z2 oozes quality. It flies in use and is capable of taking brilliant photos and playing videos at 4K cinephile quality. If the design had just been a bit more practical, it would have been unstoppable.
Google Nexus 5
This is a bargain only topped by the OnePlus One. The Nexus delivers top-end spec at a mid-range price and has a 4.95in screen, faster processor and a 8MP snapper. But its biggest improvement is its chocolatey-smooth Android KitKat 4.4 OS.
Apple iPhone 5s
A curious blend of tried and tested – 4in screen, design, huge cost – with new and exciting features like a 64-bit processor, fingerprint-sensing home button and iOS 7. What it adds up to is an easy purchase for most – but here, at last, comes iPhone 6…
Sony Xperia Z1 Compact
With a 4.3in, 720p screen, Snapdragon-powered performance, solid, waterproof body and a 20.7MP camera, the Z1 Compact is the first small superphone that delivers with no ifs or buts. If you’re small of hand but demanding of phone, it’s the Android for you.
Motorola Moto G
Google’s sprinkled some magical Nexus dust over its latest Motorola blower: the Moto G costs a mere £130 yet has a distinctly non-budget 4.5in 720p screen and quad-core processor. Paltry storage and poor camera count against it – but then again: £130!
STUFF SAYS LG surprises us again. There’s barely a single thing wrong with the G3… and so, so much that’s right with it
£435 +++++ £470 +++++
BEST FOR RAW POWER
£230 +++++ £280 +++++
BEST FOR VALUE FOR MONEY
£420 +++++ £435 +++++ from £280 +++++ £470 +++++ £335 +++++
BEST FOR DAINTY HANDS
from £130 +++++
FOR THE FULL REVIEWS AND OUR SMARTPHONE BUYING GUIDE, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10S/SMARTPHONES
PLUG INTO STUFF’S SOCIAL NETWORK facebook.com/joinstuff
O Prices quoted are for handset only unless otherwise stated
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TABLETS 133 T HO Y BU
Apple iPad Air
The more things change, the more they stay the same. As the addition of the ‘Air’ moniker implies, the iPad’s been slimmed down on the outside and beefed up on the inside, while retaining all the other goodies that made previous versions great. So it now rocks the 64-bit A7 chip and M7 motion coprocessor that debuted with the iPhone 5s, while keeping the gorgeous screen, quality build and abundance of tablet-optimised apps that first won our hearts.
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Apple iPad Mini With Retina Display
Apple’s baby tab has been in for a nip and a tuck and emerged with a youthful-looking 2048x1536 screen. The flawless build quality, creativity-friendly 7.9in form and oodles of apps remain; only a few colour inaccuracies keep it behind the Air.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S 10.5
Samsung has blessed the Galaxy Tab with one of the best tablet screens we’ve ever laid eyes on, plus an impressive camera and some incredible stamina – but there are performance niggles and Apple’s tablet app selection is still far superior.
Samsung Galaxy Tab S 8.4
Superb screen, unique features… really, there’s very little that’s missing here. For us the iPad Mini beats the smaller Samsung by a whisker for its design, performance and wider selection of optimised apps, but against other Android tabs it’s a winner.
Google Nexus 7
The Nexus has moved further ahead of the Android pack by virtue of getting an update to OS 4.4 KitKat. It’s now smoother, faster and more battery-friendly than ever, while its 323 pixel-per-inch 1080p screen and quad-core power still impress.
Microsoft Surface Pro 3
At last, Microsoft has delivered on the promise of the tablet-cum-laptop hybrid. It proves there’s space in the world for a design that’s more productive than an iPad or Galaxy Note, but easier to hump around than a traditional laptop.
Asus Transformer Pad
Transformers have always been more about laptop replacement than tableteering, and this one is the laptoppiest yet. A 2560x1600 screen, two-day battery life (with keyboard dock) and quad-core Tegra processor all work Android up into a frenzy.
Amazon Kindle Fire HDX 7
The Fire HDX presents a sanitised version of Android cloaked in a user-friendly Amazon skin. There’s even a ‘Mayday’ button for instant video help. A great build, fast processor and stunning screen round off a package that’ll appeal to families and less techy types.
Asus Transformer Book T100
This 10.1in tab-and-dock combo has enough grunt to run full Win 8.1 thanks to Intel’s new Baytrail CPU. The 1366x768 screen is a good ’un, with crisp text, great contrast and colours that pop, while dual-band Wi-Fi and a day-long battery are also welcome.
Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 (2014)
The new 10.1 is fit to bursting with clever tricks, comes with the note-tastic S Pen and has a stunning 2560x1600 screen. But while we can forgive it its tacky looks, minor performance glitches deny it that fifth star; we hope firmware updates will fix them.
STUFF SAYS Now thinner, lighter and more powerful than ever, the iPad Air is a beautiful sliver of gadget heaven
from £320 +++++ from £250 +++++ £350 +++++
BEST FOR MAGAZINES AND MOVIES
£280 +++++ from £155 +++++
BEST FOR VALUE AND PERFORMANCE
from £640 +++++
BEST FOR WORKING ANYWHERE
£300 +++++ from £200 +++++
BEST FOR TECHNOPHOBES
from £270 +++++ £400 ++++,
FOR THE FULL REVIEWS AND OUR TABLET BUYING GUIDE, VISIT WWW.STUFF.TV/TOP-10S/TABLETS
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HI-FI & MUSIC STREAMING
T HO Y BU
Sonos multiroom system
Who needs to drill holes and re-plaster walls to get a multiroom music system? Not you. With the addition of the cracking little Play:1 (£170) Sonos has made it easier than ever to start spreading your tunes around. Then maybe hook up a Connect to your existing hi-fi and router, and add speakers to a Connect:Amp in another room, or a SUB for a bass boost. You’ll run out of rooms before you run out of options. For a further upgrade, the Arcam rSeries SonLink DAC works a treat with the Connect.
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Cambridge Audio Stream Magic 6
Our favourite music streamer is only kept from the top spot by the brilliant flexibility of the full Sonos system; as a single player, we’d go for this every time. Team it with the Azur 651A amp (£350), feed it high-resolution 24-bit tunes and you’ll never look back.
Naim UnitiQute 2
Awarded ‘Best Music System £800-£1500’ by our friends at What Hi-Fi? Sound And Vision, this punchy little system delivers superb performance. With streaming smarts, DAB+ and internet radio it’s highly capable. Just don’t feed it low-quality music.
Bowers & Wilkins Z2
The baby of B&W’s AirPlay range is a little belter, and it adds a proper Lightning dock to Apple’s wireless tech. It’ll easily fill a small to medium-sized room with chunky bass, punchy beats and lovely, clear vocals. You’ll buy it for the look, but love it for the sound.
Denon CEOL Piccolo
This diminutive standard-bearer for next-gen micro hi-fi has Spotify and a control app, and it’ll stream your own tunes, right up to 24-bit. The dock’s 30-pin, but who cares when you’ve also got AirPlay? Add Q Acoustics 2020i speakers for awesome sound.
Audio Pro Addon T10
Available in orange, white or black, the Addon T10 is a Bluetooth speaker that also has analogue inputs and a USB socket for charging your MP3 player. Sound-wise it’s punchy and deep, with just a little too much bass. It sounds best in orange, obviously.
Libratone Zipp
A fuzzy, cylindrical, colourful AirPlay dock that will deliver detailed, punchy 360-degree sound anywhere at all, thanks to a built-in battery that gives it four hours of outdoor life. Direct Wi-Fi skills free you from cables, routers and everything but the boogie.
Sony SRS-BTM8
Forget that this Sony looks uncomfortably like a handbag because it’s actually one of the biggest bargains in hi-fi right now. Pop in four AA batteries (old-school, right?) and it will power a party in the park. It’s got fancy NFC too, but the best thing is that it sounds ace.
Q Acoustics BT3
These ultra-versatile Bluetooth speakers have an optical input for waking up the audio of your flatscreen TV. The styling is simple and so is the sound – brilliantly so, with perfect hi-fi balance and an impressive focus to the stereo image.
Sony NWZ-ZX1
The latest Walkman is a premium high-res audio player, and it’s the best-sounding portable device we’ve ever heard: you’ll notice parts of songs you never knew were there. We’re not so keen on the high price and lack of expandable storage, though.
STUFF SAYS Infinite music in every room without the need for custom installers? Sign us up now, please
from £340 +++++ £750 +++++ £1195 +++++
BEST FOR SOUND QUALITY
£180 +++++ £175 +++++
BEST FOR VERSATILITY AND VALUE
£300 +++++ £320 +++++
BEST FOR AL FRESCO PARTIES
£60 +++++
BEST FOR BARGAINOUS BLUETOOTH
£350 +++++ £510 ++++,
FOR THE FULL REVIEWS AND OUR HI-FI BUYING GUIDE, JUMP OVER TO WWW.STUFF.TV/TOP-10S/HI-FI
HEADPHONES 135 AKG K451
T HO Y BU
They’ve actually been around a little while now, but what put the K451 on-ears back on to our radar was an official price drop from £130 to £80, and a real-world price of just £55 or less. For that money they’re unbeatable – awesomely agile and punchy sound wrapped up in a subtly stylish and foldable design. Add both standard and three-button control cables for maximising compatibility and there’s practically no excuse for not getting brilliant sound from your phone.
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Bowers & Wilkins P3
Superb sound and a solid and achingly stylish design make these the best portable on-ears around. The fact that two cables come in the box – one with a mic and remote for iPhones, one without – only sweetens the already candyfloss-like deal.
SoundMagic E10
Yes, we also gave the very similar SoundMagic ES20s in-ears five stars. And they thoroughly deserve it. But we chose to keep these here because the more expensive E10s still represent a killer smiles-per-pence, sound-per-pound ratio.
Sony XBA-4iP
These chunky in-ears have four drivers pumping exceptionally punchy, detailed sound into your gloriously spoilt lugholes, but despite the fairly hefty design they’re surprisingly comfortable too. They were £400 at launch, so £160 is a fantastic deal.
Sol Republic Master Tracks
Really tough things are usually really ugly, which is why the lovely styling of the “virtually indestructible” Master Tracks headphones is so refreshing. Loud, punchy, fast and controlled, the sound is just as attractive as the design. Worth every penny.
Philips Fidelio M1BT
There’s a comprehensive set of controls, while the dark blue-grey design is nicely understated – no Bose-esque sticky-out Bluetooth modules here. Cut the cords with style and substance: these are the best Bluetooth headphones around.
Final Audio Design Adagio III
Calling a pair of headphones Adagio seems a bit pretentious, but these decidedly affordable in-ears from a Japanese company that usually occupies the most bonkers reaches of high-end earn it with brilliantly detailed and endlessly attacking sound.
SoundMagic P30
We love SoundMagic’s E10s, and our toe went into tap-spasms from the get-go with these on-ear P30s. Delivering a really easy-going yet dynamic sound, they aren’t perfect, especially in the treble, but they’ll do great work on low-res Spotify tracks.
Sennheiser Momentum
Classily styled, cushion-comfortable and smooth-sounding, the Momentums are the perfect over-ears for the dapper man about town. There’s also an on-ear version – smaller and cheaper at £130, available in pink, blue, green and, um, ivory/brown.
PSB M4U2
Yes, the M4U2s have got great noise-cancelling, but that’s only half the story. Using the built-in amp produces a sound that’s almost unbelievably punchy, clean and exciting. They might be a bit heavy, but that audio quality really is worth the weight.
STUFF SAYS Fantastic sound and great portability at an almost unbeatable price: the perfect PMP upgrade
£55 +++++ £170 +++++
BEST FOR ON-EAR EXCELLENCE
£25 +++++ £160 +++++
BEST FOR IN-EAR EXCELLENCE
£100 +++++ £160 +++++
BEST FOR GREAT SOUND WITH NO WIRES
£60 +++++ £70 +++++ £260 +++++ £300 +++++
BEST FOR SHUTTING OUT THE WORLD
FOR THE FULL REVIEWS AND OUR HEADPHONE BUYING GUIDE, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10S/HEADPHONES
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TOP THREES HOME CINEMA
138
BLU-RAY PLAYERS T HO Y BU
1 2 3
Sony BDP-S6200
The new king of Blu-ray players is the perfect balance of price, performance and features. It even looks pretty if you like that sort of thing. On top of the usual smart services (Netflix, iPlayer etc) you get Sony’s own brilliant Video Unlimited.
Panasonic DMP-BDT260
If your budget won’t stretch to the Sony above, this ultra-affordable Panasonic will see you through in superb style. It lacks a display on the front, but the performance is impossible to fault. It’s got the core smart stuff too, including Netflix.
Marantz UD7007
Pricey like an Aston Martin is pricey and about as satisfying to own, this Marantz will play any disc you like, streams music at hi-def resolutions and can withstand an earthquake. If you really, really take movies and music seriously, this is your player.
£150 +++++
BEST FOR ALL-ROUND AWESOMENESS
£90 +++++
BEST FOR EXCELLENCE ON A BUDGET
£475 +++++
SPEAKER SYSTEMS T HO Y BU
1 2 3
Sony BDV-N590
The biggest bargain in home cinema, the Blu-ray-packing N590 has a massive spec but a micro price. Picture and sound are excellent, Sony’s smart services are immense and its stylish curves and touch-sensitive controls add a dash of premium quality.
Sonos Playbar
A characteristically Sonos take on the soundbar, the Playbar hooks up to your TV via its single optical input and fills your room with a big, detailed sound. And as with all Sonos kit, it can stream your own music files, Spotify and more wirelessly around the house.
Yamaha YSP-3300
This is the only soundbar that creates proper surround sound. It fills the room, with individual effects flying in convincingly from the sides. You can feed in all your sources via HDMI and it sends video (including 4K and 3D) to your TV via a single cable.
£450 +++++
BEST FOR ALL-IN-ONE VALUE
£600 +++++
BEST FOR ALL-YOU-CANSTREAM MUSIC
£1000 +++++
PVRs, ETC PV T HO Y BU
1 2 3
Sky+HD
The new Sky boxes come with built-in Wi-Fi, to make it easier to access on-demand programming, and you can opt for a 2TB drive. Which, with more than 65 channels of HD, might well be worth the outlay. On the move, the Sky Go app is supremely slick.
Virgin TiVo
Hardware-wise, the taste-learning TiVo is a Sky+HD-beater, but it loses out on content. Mind you, subscribers to the ‘XL’ package now have free access to all the BT Sport channels: Premier League kickyball, MotoGP and more, in lovely HD.
Humax DTR-T1010 YouView
Delivering free-to-air TV with the convenience of Sky or TiVo, the Humax lets you browse the last week’s catch-up TV direct from the EPG or record your own on its HDD. The iOS/Android app’s remote record is handy, and it’s all without a costly subscription.
from £free
+ £21.50/month
+++++
BEST FOR DELIVERING EVERYTHING
from £free + £24/month
+++++
from £180 (500GB) +++++
BEST FOR SUBSCRIPTIONFREE TV
FOR OUR COMPLETE HOME CINEMA TOP 10 LISTS, POINT YOUR CLICKER AT WWW.STUFF.TV/TOP-10S
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SAMSUNG
HU8500 SERIES • CURVED 4K UHD TV Introducing a breakthrough in TV viewing that will change the way you watch TV forever the Samsung HU8500 Curved UHD. Wider viewing angles, pure and accurate colour reproduction and a sense of depth never experienced before are only possible on a curved Samsung screen, specifically shaped for UHD viewing at its very best. Prices from £2699
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NAD D 7050
NETWORK AMPLIFIER / DAC The D 7050 from NAD with Apple AirPlay and Spotify Connect is one simple package. If you have a computer or smartphone running iTunes and a home Wi-Fi network, just add the D 7050 and your favourite loudspeakers. You will now have a state of the art audio system in a stylish and compact package that fits anywhere in your home.
£799
NAIM MU-SO
WIRELESS MUSIC SYSTEM Through its advanced connectivity, mu so will unleash your digital music, wherever it’s stored. And it’s so easy to set up and use that you’ll find yourself listening to and enjoying your favourite artists more than ever before. Combining Naim’s expertise in streaming, amplification and loudspeaker technology. Mu so is the stage your music deserves, bringing you closer to the songs that inspire your life.
£895
BLUESOUND
BLUESOUND IS A 24-BIT NATIVE, PURE DIGITAL WIRELESS STREAMING MUSIC SYSTEM Even 16-bit CDs have only about half of the audio spectrum that the master recording holds and that’s a whole lot more than MP3s have left in them. With more than a decade of compressed audio piping through earbud headphones and cheap dock players, the time has come. The portable players we all love have created a new way of listening to music, but there hasn’t really been much there to hear. Until now. Enter true 24-bit HD digital audio. A sound experience like no other. Because it’s engineered like no other. ADVERT VALID UNTIL 17/10/2014. E&OE SOME BRANDS ARE NOT AVAILABLE IN ALL STORES.
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140
TVs
T HO Y BU
Samsung UE55HU7500
Finally, a 4K TV that can be recommended without hesitation. Not only does it play the limited amount of 4K material on Netflix with eye-moistening beauty, it’s actually just as good as a full HD TV when playing 1080p stuff, and that wasn’t the case with last year’s models. Chuck in all of Samsung’s usual smart TV whizzbang, remove the silly motion-sensing controls and knock the price to something that wouldn’t make a city banker blush, and you’ve got 2014’s star TV.
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NE
6 7
W NE
8 9 10
Sony KDL-50W829B
4K a bit too new-fangled (or pricey) for you? How about a 50in edge-lit LED LCD with all of Sony’s smart features for well under a grand? It’s not even like picture quality’s been sacrificed – this is an absolute corker of a telly in every way.
Samsung UE46F7000
The F7000 might just be the sweetest spot in Samsung’s current range – the same spectacular performance as the F8000 series but without the show-off design. Great picture quality and slick online functionality in one box.
Samsung UE40H6400
Samsung’s on an amazing roll with its 2014 TVs, and if you’re looking for a loungefriendly Full HD set, this 40incher is the place to start. It’s not as cheap as some other tellies this size, but for smarts and picture performance its very hard to beat.
Sony KDL 40W605B
If you’re looking for a TV that’s super-slim, this isn’t it. But if you’re looking for one that’s the right size for any room, has all the on-demand services you could hope for and produces brill pictures from any source, you won’t find better for the cash.
Samsung UE48H6400
Since when was 48in a screen size for tellies? Well it turns out to be a great size to deliver really immersive movies and games without utterly dominating the average lounge. It’s smart, stylish and great value for that much screen real estate.
Sony KD-55X8505B
If you want to jump on the 4K bandwagon with Sony you could go for the wedge-shaped X9, which is great, but we’d suggest that this slimmer, less intrusive ‘entry-level’ option is an even better buy. It’s still got all the smart stuff and great performance.
Panasonic TX-42AS500B
It’s not the prettiest, it’s not the smartest, and with just two HDMI inputs it’s not the most connected TV about, but there’s a really simple, intuitive OS pulling the strings here – and a performance that’s very strong given the price and 42in size.
LG 55UB950V
LG’s 4K flagship looks gorgeous with Netflix’s 4K content, but the real story here is the Web OS interface, which finally gives a boot up the bottom of TV UIs. This is by far the most pleasant, colourful, multi-task-friendly and downright fun TV there’s ever been.
Sony KDL-55W955
Sony’s ‘wedge design’ gives greater internal volume, which makes the speakers sound better. The excellent colours, motion and sound quality are all great, but it lacks a wow factor and doesn’t have the deepest blacks. There are discounts though.
STUFF SAYS Embrace the 4K future while still getting the best of your current Blu-rays and TV: it’s the proverbial win-win
£1840 +++++ £830 +++++
BEST FOR AFFORDABLE BRILLIANCE
£1550 +++++ £550 +++++ £430 +++++
BEST FOR TELLY ON A BUDGET
£700 +++++ £1800 ++++, £450 ++++, £1880 ++++,
BEST FOR MAKING TV FUN AGAIN
£1300 ++++,
FOR THE FULL REVIEWS AND OUR TV BUYING GUIDE, NAVIGATE TO WWW.STUFF.TV/TOP-10S/TVS
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142
LAPTOPS
T HO Y BU
TE DA UP
The 2014 MacBook Air update means, once again, our favourite old laptop is now our favourite new laptop. Nothing’s changed on the outside, and under the skin there’s just a slight processor boost from 1.3GHz to 1.4GHz, but combined with a price cut of £100 on each model we’re still happy with that. The very top model, which comes with a 256GB SSD, is now just under a grand, too. Head to stuff.tv for our full reviews of both 13in and 11in versions.
2 3 4 5 6 7 8
W
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STUFF SAYS
Apple MacBook Air 13in (2014)
9 10
It’s not a major upgrade, but Apple has improved the Air’s already awesome spec and lopped £100 off the price
from £660 +++++
Apple MacBook Pro with Retina Display 13in (2014)
Choosing between Air and Pro is getting harder. Both now run on Haswell chips, but the Pro is faster, with a 2014 processor boost. There’s a 4K-capable Thunderbolt 2 port, and then that Retina screen, one of the most gorgeous you’ll see. Tough call.
from £1000 +++++
BEST FOR EVERYTHING BAR THE PRICE
Microsoft Surface Pro 3
from £750
BEST FOR WORKING ANYWHERE
At last, Microsoft has delivered on the promise of the tablet-cum-laptop hybrid. It proves there’s space in the world for a design that’s more productive than an iPad or Galaxy Note, but easier to hump around than a traditional laptop.
Alienware 17
A brute of a machine in every way, the Alienware 17 weighs as much as four MacBook Airs and probably frags harder than 10 of them. Core i7 Haswell processor at 3.4GHz, Nvidia GeForce graphics, up to 32GB of RAM… Our trigger finger’s already itching.
Asus Zenbook UX302
Asus has done a wonderful job of creating an ultra-slim laptop that’s as far removed from Apple’s influence as possible, while maintaining a stylish and unique aesthetic. The 13.3in display is razor-sharp and colourful – this is our favourite Ultrabook.
Acer C720 Chromebook
Bargain Chromebooks are everywhere right now, but the C720 stands out even so. It’s well made, well specced (for a Chromebook) and, crucially, has proper ports: HDMI, USB3.0 and SD are all here. The HP at No.7 is prettier, but the Acer’s the one we’d buy.
Acer Aspire S7
The Aspire S7 is almost the perfect Ultrabook – it matches the MacBook Air for weight, beats it for slimness by 6mm, and has a gorgeous 1920x1080 touch-friendly screen. Only its battery, which lasted a mere 5hrs on test, prevents it getting that fifth star.
HP Chromebook 11
HP’s done a fine job with the 11 (ignoring the faulty power supply recall): it’s small, light and everything a neo-netbook should be. However, the Chromebook 14 has since launched on the HP store and is worth a look if you want a larger screen.
Acer Aspire Switch 10
A Windows laptop and 10.1-inch tablet for just £300? This seriously flexible bundle is Asus’ best hybrid yet. Only a bit heavier than a MacBook Air, the square-edged ergonomics and battery life are issues, but as a whole package it makes a lot of sense.
Lenovo IdeaPad Flex 15D
Lenovo’s latest contortioning computer is hefty, which is handy in that you get a full keyboard and 15in screen, but a bit of an issue in terms of portability – and it means the 1366x768 resolution looks a little soft. It stands up nicely for movie-watching, though.
(with Type Cover)
+++++ from £1500 +++++
BEST FOR SERIOUS GAMERS
£950 ++++, £180 ++++,
BEST FOR VALUE AND PORTABILITY
£1340 ++++, £190 ++++, £300 ++++, £445 +++,,
BEST FOR LITERAL FLEXIBILITY
FOR THE FULL REVIEWS AND OUR LAPTOPS BUYING GUIDE, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10S/LAPTOPS-NETBOOKS
THIS MONTH IN.. 2007
Sony HDR-SR8E
Aliph Jawbone
Creative Zen Stone 1GB
Philips DCM230
£1200
£80
£28
£230
Stuff said Why insult your new telly with anything less than full HD? It has jaw-dropping output, the colour is superb and the touchscreen menus are excellent. £1200 is going to make a bit of a dent, but the Sony delivers – so get over it and buy. +++++
Stuff said The only third-party Bluetooth headset worthy of selling alongside the iPhone, the Jawbone is a work of art. Noise Shield automatically ups the volume when things get noisy, and once you attach the correct loop and earpiece it fits perfectly. +++++
Stuff said Creative’s ‘Shuffle’ does one thing Apple’s doesn’t: it gives you change from £30. That said, it doesn’t like Macs and – more surprisingly – it sounds a bit spiky. We don’t expect B&O-bashing sound for the price, but this borders on a family black sheep. +++,,
Stuff said Philips’ product designers deserve a medal for the look of the DCM230, and an honourable mention for squeezing in a CD player, FM radio and USB music slot. The sound guys have come up with something inoffensive but in no way special. ++++,
TOP THREES BEST OF THE REST 143 HOME COMPUTERS T HO Y BU
1 2 3
Apple iMac
The iMac is thinner and more powerful than ever: Core i5 or i7 and at least 8GB RAM running the none-more-elegant OS X Mavericks. A 2013 update brought Intel’s Haswell CPU, a hybrid storage option, speedy 802.11ac Wi-Fi and a price increase.
Sapphire Edge VS8
This mini-PC may look like the Terminator’s lunchbox, but it houses AMD’s 1.6GHz A8 APU and dedicated HD7600G graphics with 4GB of RAM. A capable little fellow, the VS8 even does a decent job with the latest gaming titles (with the detail dialled back a little).
Alienware X51 (2014)
The X51 hasn’t changed a huge amount, but the wee size matched with powerful components make it perfectly suited to HD gaming. Steam Machines are going to liven this market up but right now it’s the best balance of power and form in PC land.
from £900 +++++
BEST FOR ALL-ROUND BRILLIANCE
from £340 +++++
BEST FOR COMPACT POWER
from £800 +++++
SAT-NAV T HO Y BU
1 2 3
TomTom GO 6000
The four-figure model name marks this an ‘Always Connected’ device with a SIM card for live traffic updates, while the ‘6’ in the name refers to its crisp 6in, 800x480 screen. It’s rather good, if huge. Smartphone-connected versions (600, 500, 400) are cheaper.
Google Maps Navigation
Apple’s Maps app remains pretty, but flawed. With Google Nav now back in the iTunes Store, there really is one solid choice for both iOS and Android users and this is it. Street View, accurate public transport info, cycle maps and decent traffic warnings. Bingo.
Garmin nüvi 3598LMT-D
Still pricier than the TomTom, the flagship Garmin has a similarly crisp (if only 5in) 800x480 screen, with clever photo-realistic junctions and 3D terrain. The DAB traffic works fine, but the extra cable is a faff too far for us.
£250 +++++
BEST FOR TOTAL TRAFFIC KNOWLEDGE
£free +++++
BEST FOR BUDGET TRAVELLERS
£260 +++++
CAMCORDERS T HO Y BU
1 2 3
Sony PJ530
When quality footage matters, you’ll be glad you splashed out on the superb PJ530. We haven’t tested a better camcorder at this price – it captures excellent footage in all sorts of environments, with a colossal zoom and built-in projector into the bargain.
Canon XA10
Canon’s ultra-compact XA10 handles fine detail superbly due to its f/1.8 lens and 2.37MP chip. It might not look hefty enough to play with the big boys, but twin XLR inputs on its detachable handle give would-be filmmakers professional prowess out of the box.
GoPro Hero3+ Silver Edition
You may well wonder why the flagship Black Edition of the Hero3+ isn’t in this slot, but for our money the extras don’t quite justify the extra expense. We reckon the Silver Edition is the current, umm, hero of the range, and a killer cam for your killer stunts.
£465 +++++
BEST FOR TOP-QUALITY HOME MOVIES
£1450 +++++
BEST FOR SERIOUS SHOOTERS
£190 +++++
BEST FOR ADRENALINE JUNKIES
FOR THE FULL REVIEWS IN EACH CATEGORY AND OUR BUYING GUIDES, VISIT WWW.STUFF.TV/TOP-10S
Every gadget, every review, every page, available on PC, Mac, iPad and Android www.stuff.tv/digital-magazine
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144
GAMES
T HO Y BU
Grand Theft Auto 5 PS3/Xbox 360
You probably think you already know everything there is to know about GTA 5. After all, if you’ve been alive anywhere in the world for the past year you’ll have read all about life in Los Santos. So you’ll already know that it shines a satirical torch on the 21st century religion of celebrity. And that everything from social media to self-help gurus gets a kicking. And that it’s better-looking than ever. But really you only need to know one thing about it: it’s the most fun you’ll have on a console this month.
2 3
STUFF SAYS The gargantuan gameworld of Los Santos is the most entertaining place to hang out since Vice City
+++++
The Last Of Us PS3/PS4
Now remastered for PS4, this is the best zombie-apocalypse game ever. It looks magnificent and plays even better, with a moving story and frights aplenty. It’s tough… but then a real-life zombie apocalypse would be. Think of this as essential prep.
+++++
Tomb Raider PC/PS3/Xbox 360
Yes, it’s a franchise reboot, but the well-paced mixture of puzzles, action sequences, gunfights and stealth make the latest Lara Croft adventure an immersive, cinematic experience. Possibly the best fun we’ve ever had pretending to be a 21-year-old girl.
+++++
4
FIFA 14 PS4/Xbox One The next-gen edition of FIFA 14 is, perhaps unsurprisingly, better than the PS3/Xbox 360 version, thus its recent leap a couple of places up the table. Players and crowd are more realistically presented, and there are improvements in gameplay and flow.
+++++
5
Watch_Dogs PC/PS3/PS4/Xbox One/Xbox 360 This one promised big – and while it doesn’t quite match the level of expectation, its recreation of Chicago is impressive, the cat-and-mouse multiplayer livens things up and the gunplay, hacking and driving provide good, solid fun with lots to do and see.
++++,
6 7 8 9 10
BEST FOR STORY
Titanfall Xbox One
The biggest Xbox One game launch so far, this FPS robot-fighting sim came with high expectations… and just about lives up to them. It’s a brilliant smash-fest, in a world where it rains massive ‘Titan’ robots to board and attack. The storyline is weak, though.
Mario Kart 8 Wii U
Building upon lesser recent entries while adding flashy new twists and delightful physics-defying courses, Mario Kart 8 is a rare Wii U highlight. Although single-player still lacks punch, multiplayer is endlessly entertaining: it’s glossy and fluid throughout.
South Park: The Stick Of Truth PC/PS3/Xbox 360
Written by show creators Trey Parker and Matt Stone themselves, this is the definitive South Park game, complete with its famously merciless humour and cutout animation. And it’s backed by strong RPG mechanics to boot.
++++,
++++,
BEST FOR STUDENT HOUSES
++++,
BEST FOR RPG WITH ADDED LOL
++++,
BEST FOR A HARDCORE CHALLENGE
Dark Souls II PC/PS3/Xbox 360
You might never play a tougher game than this old-school action-RPG sequel, which drops you into the mystical land of Drangleic and lets you figure things out for yourself. Mostly by being killed… but that just makes it all the more rewarding when you get it right.
Wolfenstein: The New Order PC/PS3/PS4/Xbox One/Xbox 360
How do you solve a problem like Nazi world domination? With guns. Lots of guns. Even so, this remake might not be exactly what you’re expecting: as well as carnage and genetically engineered soldiers, there’s a sombre message on the pointlessness of war.
++++,
FOR THE FULL REVIEWS AND OUR GAME-BUYING GUIDE, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10S/APPS-GAMES/GAMES
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GAMES MACHINES 145 T HO Y BU
TE DA UP
Sony PlayStation 4
Sony’s next-gen console may not quite be the finished article, but it’s already the best games machine on the planet. With whisper-quiet operation and a sleek form, it’ll slot neatly into your lounge setup, but more importantly it offers bags of power, with full 1080p on all titles and not a whiff of lag. The controller’s vastly improved, too, while remote streaming to PS Vita is a nice bonus. All that and it’s still cheaper than the Xbox One. When proper media streaming arrives, it’ll be unstoppable.
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Microsoft Xbox One
This is very different to the Xbox One of 2013. Most significantly, the unpopular Kinect feature is now out of the deal, allowing Microsoft to drop the price and releasing enough extra power for developers to make their games look and play better.
Microsoft Xbox 360
Yes, it’s been succeeded by the One, but the years have been kind to the 360. With an amazing catalogue of recent games that use its full potential, brilliant media streaming skills and a low, low price it’s impossible not to recommend it to cash-strapped gamers.
Sony PlayStation 3
The PS3 has been around a while, but, like the Xbox 360, that just means it has plenty of great games. Online gaming via PlayStation Network is still brilliant and still free (it’s £40/yr for PS4), and it’s worth buying for its Blu-ray and media streaming alone.
Alienware X51 (2014)
The X51 hasn’t changed a huge amount, but the wee size matched with powerful components make it perfectly suited to HD gaming. Steam Machines are going to liven this market up but right now it’s the best balance of power and form in PC land.
Nintendo 3DS XL
The bigger version of Nintendo’s latest handheld serves up a larger 3D sweet spot and slightly more premium finish than its smaller sibling. There’s still only one thumb-stick, but it’s a tried and tested design that’s served Nintendo titles very well over the years.
Sony PlayStation Vita Slim
The Slim (aka PCH-2000) is comfier to hold than the original Vita, it lasts longer, it no longer relies on proprietary cables and the screen is an improvement… but Sony could have gone so much further, not least by adding more than 1GB of internal storage.
PC Specialist Nvidia GTX Titan Battlebox
This powerhouse delivers mind-blowing 4K gaming, bringing eye-searing detail to Arkham Origins in our test. But twin Nvidia GTX Titan graphics cards and liquid cooling don’t come cheap, and neither will the 4K monitor you’ll need to go with it.
Nintendo Wii U
While it hasn’t had the same impact as the original Wii, don’t underestimate the Wii U’s fun factor. Nintendo’s bottomless bag of superb game franchises rolls on with the excitement of the 2014’s Mario Kart 8 release (with its anti-gravity karts and submarine racing).
Nvidia Shield
Like an Xbox controller with a 5in screen stuck to it, this Android console is (just about) portable enough to play on the bus. As well as having access to hundreds of games via Google Play, the Shield can stream full PC titles from your PC – pretty damn cool.
STUFF SAYS Slick, powerful and packed with stand-out features, the PS4 delivers on the next-gen console promise
£340 +++++ £350 +++++ from £150 +++++
BEST FOR BUDGET GAMING
from £170 +++++ from £600 +++++ £170 ++++, £135 ++++,
BEST FOR PORTABLE PLAYTIME
£3900 ++++,
BEST FOR FLUSH 4K FETISHISTS
£240 ++++, £185 ++++,
FOR FULL REVIEWS OF ALL THE CONSOLES FEATURED HERE, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10S/GAMES-MACHINES
146
COMPACT CAMERAS
T HO Y BU
Last year’s HX50 was our previous pick for the best compact camera around, and 2014’s HX60 isn’t a huge departure from its predecessor in terms of build quality, ease of use, specifications and performance – all of which are excellent. And thankfully the superb 30x zoom lens remains. What it does add is NFC (for quick pairing with a tablet or phone) and a newer Bionz X processor, making it a slightly nippier performer.
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STUFF SAYS
Sony DSC-HX60
7 8 9 10
Fujifilm X20
The X20 isn’t all retro looks and no trousers. It excels in Advanced Auto mode and has manual controls and RAW shooting for creative days. The optical viewfinder, though small, is linked to the 4x zoom and frames well. All this, and it looks cool.
Sony DSC-RX100
The 20MP RX100 is just what we’re looking for in an advanced compact: pocketable with a huge 1in sensor that serves up great images. After something a bit different? Sony’s crazy lens-without-a-body, the QX100, has much of the same tech.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ200
If you want a superzoom cam, the Lumix FZ200 wipes the floor with its rival snoopy snappers. A small and solid build is coupled with a 24x optical zoom, an excellent auto mode and spot-on exposure abilities. The downside is the video, which is a mixed bag.
Fujifilm FinePix X100S
Fujifilm’s souped up its fixed-lens retro shooter, with faster focusing and a big APS-C sensor. It’s not all new, though, keeping the 35mm-equivalent f/2 lens and hybrid viewfinder from the X100. A less retro version with black finish is now available too.
Canon PowerShot G16
The G16 packs a lot into its sturdy body: optical viewfinder, loads of manual controls and an f1.8-2.8, 28-140mm (equivalent) zoom lens. Upgrades over the G15 include Wi-Fi and faster burst shooting of up to 12fps, while image quality is as good as ever.
Nikon Coolpix AW120
The ultimate rugged camera: almost indestructible, and fit for temperatures as low as -10°C, it will even survive a rinse cycle in your dishwasher. The AW120 also takes lovely pictures and impressive video in both good lighting and dimmer conditions.
Canon PowerShot G1 X MkII
This powerful snapper is back, with a tilting touchscreen and a wider wide-angle lens but no viewfinder. The zoom and video are still fairly underwhelming but in terms of sheer image quality there aren’t many non-system cameras around that can beat it.
Canon PowerShot S120
Replacing the S110, the S120 is a compact camera for DSLR users on their days off. Its 12.1MP stills, low-light prowess and useful long-exposure modes are welcome, while its slightly laggy lens-ring control and hit-and-miss Wi-Fi features take the shine off.
Nikon Coolpix S6700
Your phone can probably match it for wide-angle photos in good conditions, but if you want to go equipped with a bit more creative control without loading yourself down with kit, the S6700 will be a useful addition to your gadget arsenal.
Sturdy, simple to use and offering a huge zoom range for its size, this is a hugely capable all-rounder
£250 +++++ £330 +++++ £300 +++++ £300 +++++
BEST FOR AT-A-DISTANCE SHOOTING
£690 +++++
BEST FOR DSLR PICS IN A SMALL BODY
£310 +++++ £270 +++++
BEST FOR EXTREME EXPLOITS
£470 ++++, £250 ++++, £120 +++,,
FOR THE FULL REVIEWS AND OUR CAMERA BUYING GUIDE, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10S/COMPACT-CAMERAS
IN CASE YOU MISSED.. ON-DEMAND PVRs
Humax DTR-T2000
BT YouView+
TalkTalk YouView+
Humax HB-1000S
£200 / humaxdigital.com/uk Other boxes here offer more unique content, but YouView’s service is lovely, with a clean and intuitive interface. Find the show you missed and the relevant catch-up player will open – the search function unites all available services, which is really convenient. +++++
£175 (free on contract) / bt.com/youview The BT branding adds its own content to the core YouView experience, depending on your package: with BT Broadband you get both the BT Sport and BT Player apps. The box is as responsive as the standard one, but the remote is better. +++++
£free on contract / talktalk.co.uk This is another plasticky box, but with more subtle lights than the BT version. There’s more stuff to watch here than on the other boxes, even without paying for extras, and if you’re already on TalkTalk broadband it’s a no-brainer to upgrade. +++++
£100 / humaxdigital.com/uk Like YouView, the Freetime EPG lets you roll back seven days and is integrated with the main catch-up services. This box only records one channel at a time, but you get YouTube, picture quality is excellent and we like having the freedom to add a hard drive of our choice. ++++,
SLRs, ETC 147 T HO Y BU
Olympus OM-D E-M1
Olympus’ new flagship is armed with the same excellent 16.3MP sensor as its predecessor the E-M5, but now has an improved autofocus system, a startlingly good electronic viewfinder and masses of direct controls. And look out for the E-M10: pretty much an E-M5 minus the weatherproofing and with only 3-axis stabilisation, but with an improved EVF, better metering, enhanced Wi-Fi and built-in flash in a smaller, cheaper body.
STUFF SAYS Take the E-M5’s amazing speed and quality, then add pro controls and you get the best system cam so far
£780 +++++ (body only)
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Canon EOS 700D
Look, it’s a new Canon at No2. No, wait, it’s the old one. Actually, it’s kind of both. The 700D is a minor upgrade over the 650D, keeping its 18MP sensor, flip-out touchscreen and autofocus during video and adding little beyond a new kit lens. Still great, though.
Sony A6000
Sony’s new system camera may be tiny but it packs a big photographic punch. There may be no optical image stabilisation but the incredible speed and accuracy of the A6000’s autofocus is a real highlight, as is its large, clear electronic viewfinder.
Nikon D600
Pro power has never come at such a reasonable price. A full-frame 24.3MP sensor combines with accurate 39-point autofocus for stunning results. Dual SD card slots, built-in flash and 5.5fps shooting speed complete a seriously powerful proposition.
Sony A7R
We love this camera. It’s lightweight but tough and delivers results that outstrip pretty much any other compact system camera on the market. It has a huge full-frame 36.4MP sensor and noise-suppression. Your wallet might weep, but your photo album will sing.
Canon EOS 70D
The 70D is Canon’s best camera in years. It’s the first ‘proper’ DSLR to nail autofocus in videos and Live View, offers a multitude of manual controls and can take stunning pics in almost any situation. Amateurs who’ve outgrown the entry level should look no further.
Panasonic Lumix GH4
Its 4K recording might grab the headlines, but the GH4 is more than that – it’s Panasonic’s finest all-round camera yet. Build quality is superb, autofocus is fast and accurate, image quality is great and video is even better.
Fujifilm X-T1
There’s lots to love about this snapper, from its clever viewfinder and lightning-speed focus to the weatherproof body. One for the analogue lovers, it has actual buttons and dials with no touchscreen. The lack of in-cam image stabilisation is our only complaint.
Panasonic Lumix DMC-GX7
The 16MP Panasonic is a versatile beast that, while not being much of a looker, has added tricks such as a tilting EVF and a handy touchscreen LCD. It’s great for smooth hi-def video recording and, with the bijou 20mm f/1.7 lens, is a great travel companion.
Pentax K-3
With a 24MP APS-C sensor, advanced autofocus system, snappy burst shooting and clever anti-aliasing simulator, the K-3 is a stills snapper par excellence. A weatherproof body and in-camera stabilisation are welcome too, but it’s not quite so hot with video.
£360
(body only)
+++++
BEST FOR ALL-ROUND VALUE
£470
(body only)
+++++ £960
(body only)
+++++ £1250
(body only)
+++++
BEST FOR SHOOTING LIKE THE PROS
£675
(body only)
+++++ £1280
(body only)
+++++
BEST FOR HI-RES VIDEO
£790
(body only)
+++++ £470
(body only)
+++++ £800
(body only)
+++++
FOR THE FULL REVIEWS AND OUR DIGITAL SLR BUYING GUIDE, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10S/DIGITAL-SLRS
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148
GEEK ACCESSORIES
T HO Y BU
STUFF SAYS
Amazon Kindle Paperwhite
There’s a new Paperwhite out on the streets of the world, and it’s brighter, whiter, faster and no more expensive. Contrast is improved, making your text blacker and the background less grey, while a claimed 25% faster processor goes largely unnoticed because it was always the fastest of the e-readers. A handy new Page Flip feature lets you keep your current page while flicking through the chapter in a pop-up window: finish the chapter, or go to sleep now?
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
3Doodler
Essentially a 3D printer nozzle in a pen. Sticks of plastic are fed through like a glue gun and extruded at 200ºC into thin air, where it immediately cools and solidifies, letting you ‘draw’ 3D structures. Amazing, and we’ve only burnt ourselves once. Maybe twice.
Korg Volca Beats
This Roland TR-808-aping drum machine uses analogue and digital beats to amazing effect given the bargain price, offering a studio’s worth of wizardry in a tablet-sized package. If this doesn’t get the nation’s youth making amazing music, nothing will.
Sennheiser X 320
The best screen, the best ebook store and new book-challenging features: Kindle’s still on top
£110 +++++ £100 +++++ £120 +++++
These gaming cans – with a noise-cancelling mic, bass boost and controls for in-game and voice channels – are aimed at Xbox 360 users. Not of the Xbox persuasion? Look out for the U 320s, which will play nicely with your PS3, PC and Mac.
£25 +++++
Tesla Model S
from £50,000 +++++
The Tesla isn’t just a better electric car – it’s a groundbreaker that history could hoist into the automotive hall of fame alongside the original Mini or even the Ford Model T. The range is good, the speed is breathtaking and the styling is sensational.
Smart ebike
This electric bike may be heavy and expensive, but its futuristic design, 250W motor and range of up to 62 miles make it ideal for the daily commute. And don’t get hung up over the price anyway – petrol and car insurance for a year would cost you way more.
DJI Phantom 2 Vision
Want to recreate those Apocalypse Now sequences at your local lido? This quadcopter offers great filming potential thanks to its 14MP/1080p HD camera and videolink, built-in GPS and ability to beam images to your smartphone from 300m away.
Leap Motion
Huge Kickstarter funding and promises of Minority Report-style PC input have come to this: a silent, KitKat-sized block of tech. It is very accurate, and the taster games are a blast, but it’ll need more consistency between apps to become truly useful.
Moga Ace Power
This click-on controller adds two analogue sticks, a D-pad and all the usual buttons to an iPhone 5/5c/5s or 5th-gen iPod Touch. It’s not brilliantly built and only works with selected games, but dedicated iOS gamers will swiftly get their money’s worth.
Up! Plus 2
Not since the early days of video encoding has a Stuff test caused such emotional rollercoastering. The Up! is the least frustrating – and least commercial – of the 3D printers we’ve tried, and the updated Plus 2 has a helpful auto-levelling build platform.
£1800 +++++
BEST FOR POWERED-UP PEDALLING
£700 ++++,
BEST FOR HIGH-FLYING FILMERSHAR
£70 ++++, £75 ++++, £1250 ++++,
BEST FOR EARLY ADOPTERS
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150
WEARABLES
T HO Y BU
Pebble Steel
Unveiled at CES 2014, the Steel keeps the straightforward looks, crisp display and five-day battery life that helped the standard Pebble win our hearts. But it holds more RAM, apps and customisable faces this time, and swaps the plastic for either a ‘Steel’ silver or matte black stylish suit, making it look and feel more like an actual watch. The Steel goes beyond the gimmicks and into the world of real-world wearable tech. Pop it on your wristwear wish-list.
2 3 W NE
W
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4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Fitbit Flex
The Flex delivers all of Fitbit’s activity-tracking smarts but in a form factor that’s less fiddly than its belt-clip counterparts. It’s packed with Bluetooth, NFC, vibratamotor and a display. America already has the new Force band, with a proper display. Here soon.
Jawbone UP24
Now with Bluetooth for hassle-free syncing, the stylish UP24 is worth the extra £25 over the Jawbone Up. The app introduces new challenges and tracks your sleep patterns. It will also gently nudge you, if you’re lazing around, to get back on the move.
Samsung Gear Live
Could it be fourth time lucky for Android Wear? A waterproof 1.63in Super AMOLED screen, a resting heart monitor and a growing selection of apps say yes. Overall, the Samsung just pips the LG G Watch. Its pitiful one-day battery life lets it down, though.
LG G Watch
Smart, subtle and more comfortable to wear than the Samsung Gear Live above, the LG gets a lot more right than it does wrong. Its voice commands are useful and it comes with a charging cradle…but it doesn’t show off Android Wear’s full potential.
Garmin Forerunner 620
Garmin’s wealth of experience in wrist-mounted GPS shines through, offering up a cacophony of stats, including vertical oscillation (how much you jiggle while running) thanks to the smart heart-rate belt. Could be cheaper and more user-friendly, though.
TomTom Multi-Sport Cardio
The new version of the TomTom Multi-Sport adds an impressively accurate heart-rate sensor to an already strong formula, allowing for more focused and personal training. It’ll track runs, cycles and swims, and the companion app is also much improved.
Samsung Gear 2 Neo
It’s the ‘budget’ plastic version of Samsung’s Gear 2, but does 99% of what the more expensive device can do, although it does not have a camera. Only compatible with certain phones, it is the Gear we’d be most likely to buy, but it’s far from essential.
Martian Notifier
The Notifier does one job very well – alerts – and you won’t be ashamed to wear one in public. It doesn’t shake off smartwatches’ dorky image but does blend a regular-looking watch design with smartphone smarts in an affordable, comfortable, reliable package.
Samsung Gear Fit
Durable, comfortable and only 55g, the Gear Fit looks great but is ultimately a bit disappointing. It has unreliable heart-rate tracking and an unresponsive curved OLED screen that’s awkward to read, especially on a run. Fit by name, but not by nature.
STUFF SAYS The best smartwatch money can buy… and the original plastic Pebble is still available for £50 less
£150 +++++ from £70 +++++
BEST FOR TRACKING YOUR LIFE
£105 +++++ £170 ++++, £160 ++++, from £285 ++++, £245 ++++,
BEST FOR TRIATHLETES IN TRAINING
£195 ++++, £100 ++++, £115 +++,,
FOR FULL REVIEWS OF ALL THE KIT ON THIS PAGE, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10S/WEARABLE-TECH
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CONNECTED HOME 151 T HO Y BU
Philips Hue
It might seem like a gimmick, but having Wi-Fi-enabled, colour-changing lightbulbs isn’t just good for impressing mates and spooking guests at seance parties. These smart LED bulbs come into their own when paired with ‘recipes’ on ifttt.com – set them to change colour with the weather or when it’s time to run to the train. They also tie in neatly with Philips’ own Ambilight TVs, casting the colours from the screen across your entire room. A great thingternet starter.
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Sonos Play:1
You don’t need to be planning a multi-room system to buy the Play:1, as it’s a stellar speaker in its own right, streaming from Spotify et al at the command of your phone or tablet. But team it up with another Sonos and you’ll be multi-rooming in minutes.
Synology DS214SE
Within this entry-level hardware beats the best NAS (network attached storage) software yet. Not gorgeous to look at, but at least it’s small and easy to hide away. If you’re new to the NAS party, the DS214se is the cheapest way to get onboard.
Devolo dLAN 500 Wi-Fi
Not that sexy, perhaps, but the Devolo system is faultless in its execution. Putting the ‘Internet’ in your ‘Internet of things’, it pipes broadband from your router, through your mains wiring and into the farthest reaches of your home, no messin’ ’bout.
Roku Streaming Stick
‘Streaming Stick’ tells you all you need to know, really: this is a stick, and it streams. It streams plenty, too – Netflix, iPlayer, Spotify, Sky Now and Sky Go to name a few. And unlike Chromecast, it’s also a dab hand with your own video and music files. Lovely stuff.
Ninja Blocks
This little box is a hacker’s dream. With everything from temp/humidity sensors to remotely switched power points, it has boundless potential for giving your home 21st century smarts. It’s open-source and has a devoted developer community.
Koubachi Wi-Fi Plant Sensor
Why have real plants when you can 3D-print space-age fake plastic trees? Because if you have real plants you can use this Wi-Fi-connected thingternet device to monitor their vitals and relay their photosynthetic desires back via an iOS app. That’s why.
Belkin WeMo
It started as an unassuming Wi-Fi-enabled socket that let you set lights or other mains-powered items on a schedule via an app. Now the range includes a motion sensor and a baby monitor (left), while a Hue-style lightbulb was announced at CES.
Netatmo
With an indoor and an outdoor module, the Netatmo monitors the conditions all around you, checking temp, humidity, air pressure, CO2 levels and noise. Use the info to fine-tune your sleeping conditions, or just tap into the global community of Netatmo users.
Google Chromecast
This USB memory-stick-sized cord-cutter is compatible with Netflix, YouTube, Google Play movies and BBC iPlayer: a cheap, simple way of getting web-sourced movies and shows onto your living-room TV.
STUFF SAYS The humble lightbulb is reborn as a net-connected, colour-changing, moodsensing smart device
from £45 +++++ £170 +++++ £120 +++++
BEST FOR BACKUP AND STREAMING
from £45 +++++
BEST FOR HOMES WITH THICK WALLS
£50 +++++ US$200 ++++, from £80 ++++, from £35 ++++,
BEST FOR THINGTERNET FOR BEGINNERS
£140 ++++, £30 ++++,
FOR FULL REVIEWS OF EVERYTHING ON THIS PAGE, VISIT STUFF.TV/TOP-10S/CONNECTED-HOME
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NEXT BIG THING?
ound has made that phone really big. Is it big, though, or is it just really near? Wait, don’t think about that – you’ll do yourself a mental mischief. To the story: back in the mists of time, some bright spark posited that piezoelectric surfaces could be laid all over the city so that pedders a-strolling and truckers a-rolling would generate electricity through nothing but going about their business. Well, here we are in the mistless now and we can clearly see that these energy-source strips are very much not all over the city. Fear not, though: a new, smaller idea dawns…
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Small ideas are never better than big ideas. No doubt they’ll be pleased to hear that down at the Queen Mary University of London, where teams of people are working hard to make ‘nanogenerators’. These will be built into the casing of your phone and are activated by the vibration caused by ambient noise such as music or mass conversation. They’ll turn that vibration into electricity and charge your phone… slowly, because of the low current produced, but inexorably and sustainably. And without you having to do anything except hang out in the noisy, fun places of the planet.
Could be perfect for the chronic 10-per-center. Ah, yes, the person on the train who’s saying “I can’t talk for long because my phone’s about to die” despite it being only 9am. And all of your anger at their apparent irresponsibility is just displaced from your own in-bed-at-10pm selfloathing. And they’re still waffling away, despite their ailing battery, about Dinah dropping her wrap in a club’s cubicle. And they’ll waffle forever, once nanogenerators come to pass – though it’ll probably be some time before the QMU lot can bring component size and power generation to a consumer-friendly balance.
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