What do you need in a good gaming mouse? Like, really need? You need it to be comfortable. You need its action to be smooth and precise. You need it to have the requisite buttons for basic play, and maybe one or two extra for customisation and macros. When it comes to designing gaming mice,…
Ever since Apple released the Airpods in December of 2016, there’s been a steady increase in number of big-ticket, fully wireless ear buds coming to market. With the Internet of Things steadily spreading toward more casual adopters of technology, and Bluetooth technology improving year on year, it’s become necessary for these devices to enter the…
The NVIDIA SHIELD is a streaming device for the modern age – sleek, fast and multi-modal. It functions as both a universal entertainment device, featuring apps like Netflix, Stan and Spotify, as well as a game streaming device, allowing interfacing with Steam and NVIDIA-powered PCs.
The Logitech G512 Carbon Mechanical Keyboard is very well mannered. It has the rapid fire response times you’re looking for in a gaming keyboard, but the click from its switches as you type is minimal. This makes it a board that can do it all — you can use this as a day-to-day office board…
It’s a bit weird reviewing a pair of PC speakers in 2018. A casual poll of friends who use desktop PC’s for work, gaming or both revealed that every last one of them use headphones, for a variety of reasons. Some of them have infants they don’t want to wake up. Some of them are…
There is a pervasive assumption among PC gaming hobbyists that wireless accessories like mice are going to be a problem. That corded solutions are always the way to go. For a long time, this rather conventional wisdom was correct, but its getting harder and harder for it to stand up under scrutiny. Devices like Logitech’s…
The HyperX Cloud Stinger Core shouldn’t sound as good as it does. This is a $70 AUD pair of headphones. You expect certain things from $70 headphones. You expect them to be cheap. You expect them to be made from hard, unyeilding plastic that keeps them from being worn comfortably for long periods. You certainly…
Younger audiences don’t give a shit about television. They watch Netflix, they watch YouTube and, in greater numbers than ever, they’re watching Twitch. This means that Twitch has become an attractive platform for streamers of all stripes to get their start. Elgato’s HD60 S is, for the first-time streamer, exactly the kind of kit you…
The soundbar has been the go-to piece of home theatre kit for people who want great sound but don’t have the room for a full surround kit. JBL’s refresh of its series of soundbars embraces this desire to save space with the succinctly named JBL BAR 3.1.
From Ultimate Ears previous releases of the Boom 2 and Megaboom, the company has just released the satisfying modern upgrades of the Blast and it’s seriously larger friend, the Megablast. The well-known strong and robust build of UE speakers have been improved with the incorporation of Amazon’s Alexa to not only accompany you in the…
One thing a pair of earphones should do the first time you put them in your ears is make a good impression. Before you even turn them on, they should sit comfortably in the ears with minimal wobble and, ideally, not make you feel like Lobot from Star Wars (though I’ve reviewed my share that…
Boasting “DSLR Performance in a compact body”, Canon’s Powershot G1X Mark III claims to be a “compact without compromise” – and it does a pretty good job of living up to those claims.
The JBL Link 300 is the high end and rather portly older sibling in JBL’s range of Google Assistant enabled speakers. But unlike most elder siblings, it carries itself with all the brashness of the youngest child. It noisy, full of personality and is, on the whole, a very likeable sort.
Gaming headsets have reached an interesting tipping point. For years many of them weren’t worth the price of the box they came in. They sported ugly, heavy designs, poor quality materials and sound quality to match. But over the last five years manufacturers have — to my shock — begun to shift their focus towards…
I’ve said before that, when reviewing home audio equipment, the exterior design of any given product is not terribly important to me as long as they device in question sounds great. Friends, the Edifier Luna HD e25HD TV speakers have really put that personal philosophy to the test. As great as they sound, and they do…
“Lighting can be the difference between a good shot and a great one.” It’s a simple statement, uttered by Australian wedding and portraiture great and Nikon Ambassador Rocco Ancora mid-lecture, but so true – and he would know. The 4-time AIPP Australian Wedding photographer of the year is such a master of light that he…
Canon’s new entry-level D-SLR offering is the very definition of “no frills”, keeping very simple functionality while still offering the intuitive handling you’d expect from Canon’s years of refining their camera bodies. The EOS 1500D, known as the Rebel T7 in the US, was released alongside the 3000D earlier this year, and it’s hard to…
Gaming headphones have come such a long way in the last couple of years, particularly those of the wireless variety. Gone are the days of terrible sound and blink-and-you’ll-miss-it battery lives. Now, if you aren’t providing premium quality sound, no-one wants a bar of you. HyperX has always seemed to be a gaming peripheral maker…
To say that Amazon’s Kindle Oasis is one of the nicest e-readers I’ve ever used would be to undersell it. Amazon are so good at building these devices by now that there’s almost no room in the market for anyone else. But, for good or ill, it’s also quite clear that Amazon have taken their…
It’s been a while since I wrote a review where I was heavily critical of a pair headphones, much less a pair of Razer headphones. But the time has come once more to be a bit hard on a pair of well-meaning earbuds.
We’ve covered a few of Edifier’s range of bookshelf speakers on The Iris before, so taking the S880DB twin set for a spin made sense. In keeping with the company tradition of quality sound in a compact package with a price point that may make you wince on first inspection, the S880DB represents the perfect speaker…
You review enough gadgets and speakers and eventually you get a sense for The Order of Things. You can tell a lot about a device just from looking at the promo images — you get an idea of their size, the design philosophy and where their predicted strengths and weaknesses will lie. And sometimes they…
For a company like Sony to release a soundbar isn’t terribly surprising — every electronics maker and their Google Assistant speaker’s got one these days. What is surprising is the amount of forethought, of user consideration that has gone into Sony’s HT-MT300 soundbar. It’s thought about space, its thought about features, its thought about potential…
You know you’re in for a bit of a ride when the courier delivering the television you’ve been sent to review complains about the weight of the box. His complaint was fair — Sony’s A1 OLED, contrary to most modern panels, weighs an absolute ton. But is it worth its weight in picture quality?
For the longest time, I railed against gaming headphones across the board. As an audiophile, there was no part of them anyone did right. They were all huge, heavy and ugly with huge bass that blew the sound to hell. In the last couple of years however, I’ve found myself finally coming around on gaming…
If Amazon has an ace up their sleeve in the race to produce smart speakers for the home, its that they currently boast a larger model line-up than any of their competitors. While having plenty of options is great, this may only complicate things for consumers that aren’t especially savvy when it comes to the…
Huawei’s MediaPad T3 is an 8 inch Android tablet that is lightweight and surprisingly nimble for its entry-level spec. For those looking for an every day tablet that can be easily thrown in a bag while travelling, you may have found the one you want.
When it comes to gaming headphones, Razer’s cans have never been my favourites. They’ve always been clunky, heavy things with sound that rarely came close to meeting my expectations. I wanted to put all that on front street because, if the Electra V2 is any indication, Razer’s headset efforts might have finally found their groove…
Logitech have made a name for themselves in the world of simple, workman-like office PC peripherals. Their keyboards are often no-frills affairs, designed to be slotted into a business environment without a fuss. It’s not that they’re pedestrian by any stretch, just that they tend to focus on practicality over flashiness. Their newest high-end wireless…
I come from a generation of tech nerds for whom dunking on Microsoft was simply the done thing. Apple was nowhere to be seen when I was a teenager and we grew up using Windows machines. To this day, whenever I see the House of M’s name attached to anything, I must fight an old,…
