Reviews

A triple-lens camera and a reliable battery are usually features you’d find in high-end flagship smartphones, but thankfully the growing trend of refining mid-range phones is changing all that. After dominating smartphone photography this year with the brilliant Huawei P30 Pro, the company wasted very little time at offering a cost effective option that focuses…

Last year Dyson completely outdid themselves with the three-in-one Dyson Pure Hot + Cool, offering an incredibly efficient device that could cool, heat and purify a room with ease. The device’s imposing size meant that this could handle all three functions for an entire room, whereas Dyson’s latest play, in the bladeless fan space they…

The WD Black P10 Game Drive is a pretty tight little piece of kit. It understands that game file sizes are larger than ever and growing as a new hardware generation looms. You can see this in real terms — models start at 2TB before hitting a monstrous 4TB and 5TB. The drive is USB…

Curating a DIY smart home is now easier, more accessible, and actually financially viable for the average consumer. As such, we’re beginning to see a lot of advanced smart security systems on the market. Google have their Nest range, for example, and then there’s Arlo, which has arguably become the more dominant surveillance solution. I…

There’s not much I don’t love about Canon’s new M-series offering the EOS M6 Mark II. It’s a small-bodied mirrorless camera sporting a whopping 32.5MP APS-C sensor, 4K 30P video, Full HD 120P video and epic Dual Pixel CMOS autofocus. And it has a mic input, and fully articulating flip-up LCD. On paper, it sounds…

I like Dell’s range of XPS ultrabooks. They’re workhorse machines designed for portability and power in equal measure. The XPS 13 7390 iterates subtly on previous designs, projecting confidence in its look and feel. Spec sheet As work machines go, this one has a spec sheet with the works: a 10th Gen Intel Core i5…

The last time I got to play with Sennheiser’s GSP range of gaming headphones, I came away rather unimpressed. Happily, I’ve found their revised design to be a great deal more agreeable. The GSP-370 range sits at the more affordable end of the scale for Sennheiser, coming in at about $350 AUD. As gaming headsets…

It may seem a bit too novel – and it is in a way – but Bose Frames represent an important evolution for one of the world’s leading audio companies. It’s understandable that the first move in a brand new tech genre has its misgivings. Released earlier this year, Bose took a break from their…

It has been quite some time since I’ve heard “I can’t find a pair, they’re sold out everywhere” uttered about some earbuds, even months after they’ve been released into the market. Such is the popularity of Sony’s WF-1000XM3 True Wireless Headphones, which descend from the same tech lineage as the over-ear WH-1000XM3s – a device…

Now that the Google Pixel 3 and its XL version have shown what the company is capable of when it comes to premium features and computational photography, the streamlined Google Pixel 3a (and 3a XL) test the team’s ability to balance a much lower price bracket with similar power, taking them into uncharted non-premium territory….

With the α6600 freshly-announced in late August for release in mid-October, now might seem like a strange time to review the Sony α6400. Sure, the α6600 has in-body stabilisation and a bigger, better battery – but it’s also much more expensive, and otherwise a very similar camera to the α6400 – which only hit the market…

Jaybird’s Tarah Pro wireless sport headphones are exactly what I need for my commute. That’s not really their purpose, they’re actually built for people who run a lot. I’m not talking about people who run a short 10k before work here, I mean they’re for people who run actual marathons. The closest I ever get…

A Great All-Rounder of enthusiast compact photography, the Lumix LX100 II was released in October 2018, which means it’s now been on the market for nearly a year. It’s an effective compact option for anyone who enjoys having full control over their exposure or shooting in RAW, but doesn’t want to mess around with interchangeable…

When I first started building my own gaming PC’s in 2002, the monitor was always an afterthought. It was the part of the build where you could reliably save a buck because as long as the refresh rate was high, you were in the clear. That’s not true any longer. Now, the monitor is as…

Microsoft’s Intellimouse brand has been around a really long time. For much of its life, the Intellimouse has been found at the cheaper end of the hardware scale, the kind of mouse your dad would buy when purchasing a $450 laptop on Boxing Day. Knowing that this was likely the target audience for their device,…

The Lumix G9 and I were first introduced at its Australian launch in Sydney in November 2017, where it was presented as a wildlife or sports photographer’s dream – super-fast shooting speeds, wild autofocus speed and a rugged weatherproof design. I’m a humble wedding and portrait photographer living in a semi-tropical Australian city, but I…

Huawei has released two new models to its Watch GT smartwatch line – the Active and Elegant. The Active has a 46mm face and the classic watch design of the GT Classic and Sport. It has a 1.39-inch AMOLED HD colour touchscreen (454×454 pixels) where as the Elegant has a 42mm face with a ceramic…

Tokyo is an insane city. It’s beautiful, busy, bustling. It’s an insane, gleaming spiders web of interlocking streets, humming with life. But like any other city, it’s noisy. It’s really noisy. Which might be why Sony flew me there to road-test their new WF-1000XM3 earbuds. What better was to test their noise-cancelling capabilities? I’d never…

A smart home in 2019 wouldn’t seem so clever if it didn’t take advantage of Dyson’s incredible run with cooling, air purifying devices over the past few years. The powerful Pure Cool should have been evidence enough of the company’s vital place in the modern home, doing away with intensive wall units and making a…

I consider this review a bit of a challenge. It’s not because I don’t know about PC’s — in fact, I use them daily. It’s simply because I don’t game on them. I’m a console man, the ease and simplicity they offer working better for me and my situation overall. So: being trusted with one…

With the hype Avengers: Endgame; the culmination of Marvel’s 10 year cinematic universe sweeping the globe, it’s only natural that movie tie-in merchandise would follow in its path. Enter Ubtech’s Iron Man MK50. Based on the Iron Man costume seen in both Avengers: Infinity War and Avengers: Endgame, the MK50 presents itself as an elaborate action figure,…

The Razer BlackWidow is hot. From its perfect, clicky-clacky keys to its shiny rainbow lighting and sleek design, everything about it is hot. In fact, you going to have to pry this keyboard out of my cold, dead hands because I’m in love. You’ve probably seen the BlackWidow before. It’s got fantastic pedigree as one…

Huawei’s follow up to last November’s MateBook X Pro (which sold out during pre-order in Australia) is here: the MateBook 13. Consumers have the choice between two MateBook 13 variants – a base model with Intel UHD Graphics 620 GPU, 256GB hard drive and 8th Gen Intel Core i5-8265U processor available in Mystic Silver. The top-tier…

JBL has been flowing from strength to strength recently. Between their Endurance and Reflect series of workout earphones to their durable, machine of a portable speaker – the Xtreme 2; JBL’s recent releases have been impressive, to say the least. Now, the wholly-owned subsidiary of HARMAN International and Samsung Electronics Co. has released the new…

Sometime in the last five years, the Big Dogs of the phone industry decided that it should be normal, good and acceptable to pay upwards of $1000 for a phone. We’ve somehow gone back to the ridiculous phone prices of the late 90s when mobiles were an emerging technology. Once a king of the mobile…

Already the newly released Huawei P30 Pro has begun racking up awards, a pile which will no doubt stack high come end of year, starting with “Best Photo Smartphone” from the Technical Image Press Association. The Chinese company’s highly anticipated new flagship builds upon a steady legacy of “rewriting the rules” – as so their…

Now a year old in the camera market, Fujifilm’s X-H1 still holds its own as a solid choice for anyone looking for a mirrorless interchangable lens camera. With 24.3 megapixels from its cropped sensor, X-Processor Pro Engine, 4K video and F-LOG recording, plus being the first Fujifilm X series camera to offer 5-Axis in-body image…

Razer’s cornered the market on sleek gaming peripherals, and the latest Basilisk Essential mouse is no exception. It’s smooth, gorgeous and comfortable, with some great design that includes a soft little nook to rest your thumb in as you game. As is common with most Razer products, it’s also powered by Razer Chroma and features…

I wasn’t expecting to like Microsoft’s Surface Headphones as much as I did. Not a brand known for producing premium tier headphones, the Surface Headphones are the apparent result of watching makers operating in the same space and careful note taking. The first thing you’ll notice about the Surface Headphones is how clean the design…

Edifier’s S3000 Pro home speakers are a bit of a wonder. They’re wireless, meaning, provided there’s an available power point, they can be placed just about anywhere you like in any given room and provide resonant, warm sound. The units themselves have been created in the now typical Edifier style. Edifier often leans toward more…