Accessories

By November 4, 2016 Read More →

Strike Hands Free Motor Genius for iPhone 7 Unboxing

image7Secure your iPhone 7 whilst on the road with the new iPhone 7 Car Cradle from Strike! This phone holder is specifically designed and built by Strike for your iPhone 7. It has fast charging capability similar to an original iPhone charger with its built-in Apple lightning cable. You can now use your iPhone longer and access your mobile applications safely whilst driving with this Car Cradle from Strike! MagSafe Chargers enhance this convenience even further by providing secure and efficient wireless charging while on the road. Their magnetic alignment ensures that your device stays in place and charges reliably, eliminating the need for awkward cable adjustments.

  • The internal passive antenna of this iPhone 7 Vehicle Mount & Phone Holder is specifically incorporated to improve your mobile signal once used with a reputable external antenna. The cradle comes with a FME male connector so it can be connected to an external antenna for additional signal boost.
  • Easy DIY package, no need for to hire a professional installer.
  • This iPhone 7 DIY phone holder is compatible with any Bluetooth car kits.
  • Check out the professionally-installed car mount version here.
  • Comes with a windscreen mount. Other mounting options can be purchased separately.
  • 3 in 1 Smarter Solution: Secure, charge, and record. Use this Alpha Cradle and turn your iPhone 7 into a dashboard camera once a Dashcam app* is installed. Record your driving and charge your device simultaneously. Save costs, no need to purchase a stand-alone dash cam kit.

Find out more about the Strike setup here.

By November 2, 2016 Read More →

Enhance GX-C1 Laptop Cooling Stand review

boxThe enhance is something of an interesting product in that I can’t imagine how many people will actually need it, however, it’s position on the market is easy to justify. People need their laptops cooled down especially when gaming. The gaming laptop is on the rise so peripherals like this are becoming in demand.

There are a lot of options on the market and some of which are better value than others, however, the Enhance really has something a lot of the competitors cannot brag and that’s the number of fans. For £20 you’re getting one huge fan and four baby brothers. When working all together these fans produce a vast amount of airflow to cool your laptop down.

There are a couple of extra features added to this that some of its competitors do not have. There is USB passthrough, meaning this doesn’t really occupy a USB port on your laptop. The Enhance allows you to plug a device into the Enhance and it will work on the laptop. A rotary dial allowing you to control the speed of the fans and indeed the brightness of the LEDs, 2 rubber braces at the edge of the surface that prevent your laptop from sliding off in the event that your laptop’s rubber feet may not be enough.

On the underside are retractable legs, these legs have three different options the highest of which raises the unit around 3 inches from the desk, an entirely second pair that raises the unit an inch and a half and some pads for no height adjustment. The unit itself is almost 2 inches thick at the widest part so the raise is quite considerable when you have the longer legs in action.

However, this cooling comes at an expense when plugging this into your laptop as it will drain the battery quite quickly. I have noticed that after being plugged in for half an hour on my laptop the battery dropped by almost a quarter. I kept the fans at full speed the entire time just to get an idea of the (pun intended) blow to the battery. A better solution maybe to hook the fan up to are portable battery or power bank.

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One negative I will say is it’s a very difficult one for any company to try and work around is portability. Obviously, this works off your laptop’s battery, however, the unit itself has to be the size of a laptop to cover the area of the laptop. This makes the Enhance a little cumbersome to take with you as it will occupy the same amount of space on a laptop bag as a laptop.  

There are plenty of alternatives on the market some quite a bit cheaper however none of them offer as many fans as this in such a simple design. Being able to control the speed all five fans mean the battery won’t take at big a hit as all five fans give more coverage than two large fans running twice as fast. This certainly isn’t the highest quality but then again the price tag isn’t particularly high either. Overall, It does what it says on the tin and it keeps your laptop cool on the go whilst looking kinda badass.

You can find the blue variant on Amazon.

By October 27, 2016 Read More →

Give Your Phone a Christmas Jumper This Year with FLAVR’s quirky cases

unspecifiedFLAVR, the new lifestyle brand from global mobile accessories and connected devices specialist, STRAX GmbH, today launches its brand new festive range of comedy Christmas jumper themed phones cases for iPhone 5/5SE, 6/6S, 7, 7 Plus and Galaxy 7 and 7 Edge. The new cases are available from £9.99 at Carphone Warehouse.

Christmas jumpers have increased in popularity over the last few years with more and more people sporting them on nights out or at work in the festive season. Usually the rule is the more extreme the design, the better. Now that need not just apply to the jumper with FLAVR’s new Christmas cases where the design is so bad, it’s good!

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With designs to appeal to everyone such as the “I want to believe” case (For X-Files fans), the “Selfie Elfie” case, the “Do the Dab” case and the “Jingle Balls case”, the new FLAVR range is sure to cause amusement amongst friends and colleagues.

For the more reserved who still want to get involved in the festive spirit, there are also a number of patterned designs to match their chosen jumper shown below. All of the range will be packaged in the shape of a stocking or Christmas card to make the perfect pre-Christmas or secret Santa Gift.

The FLAVR Christmas jumper cases are available from £9.99 from Carphone Warehouse and will also be available online in November from http://www.shopflavr.com/

Posted in: Accessories, Phones
By October 24, 2016 Read More →

Logitech M330 Silent Plus Unboxing

image3The Logitech M330 Silent Plus wireless mouse is the Swiss company’s latest portable mouse and there a killer feature… silence. Logitech claims that the mouse can deliver durability, precision and realistic click without the accompanying sound. Thus eliminating distraction.

  • Mouse (height x width x depth): 105.4 mm x 67.9 mm x 38.4 mm
  • Weight: 91.0 g
  • Connection Type: 2.4GHz wireless connection
  • Wireless range: roughly 10 meters
  • Battery Details: 1 x AA
  • Battery Life (not rechargeable): roughly 24 months
  • Sensor technology: Yes, 2D, mechanical
  • Sensor resolution: 1000 dpi
  • Scroll Wheel
  • 3 button

By October 19, 2016 Read More →

ENHANCE GX-C1 unboxing

vlcsnap-00003ENHANCE GX-C1 Laptop Cooling Stand. Premium Cooling LED Fans – Designed to minimize the overheating that can occur with laptop computers, the GX-C1 comes equipped with 5 ultra-quiet LED fans that produce an alluring blue light and provide superior airflow while maintaining a noise-free environment.

The scroll wheel allows you to tune the power of the LED lights and fans. Turn them way up or keep them at a lower power to whatever fits your needs. Comfortable Ergonomic Design – The lightweight and versatile design lets you use the cooling stand in a stationary position or take it with you wherever you go. Its metal mesh surface helps increase airflow while pulling away excess heat from the bottom of your laptop.

The 3 adjustable height settings provide you with multiple typing and viewing positions. Lay back on your bed and type on an incline or sit upright on your desk and type all while remaining comfortable. Built-in front bumpers help secure your laptop in place and prevent unwanted sliding.

Dual USB Ports – The laptop cooling pad is powered by the USB port on your computer. It also comes equipped with an extra USB port so you can connect other devices for data transfer capabilities.


https://www.amazon.co.uk/ENHANCE-GX-C1-Laptop-Cooling-Through/dp/B016RBRLWA

By October 18, 2016 Read More →

Adam Elements iKlips Duo Unboxing

image2ADAM elements have sent over their latest premium dual-connector flash drive. This is a 16gb variant of Adam Elements good looking storage device aimed at Apple users.

If you became attached to iKlips the first time round, you will love what we have in store with the new iKlips DUO. It is a design that has been perfected to be more practical, with a redesigned body to fit even more iPhone and iPad cases and a silicone body sleeve for added protection. Losing connector caps is now a thing of the past. Like the first iKlips, the new iKlips DUO is also produced with top quality and super high-speed MLC flash memory for iPhone, iPad, and iPad Pro. In addition to enabling greater speeds, it also provides greater stability and a longer lifespan, so it will last as long as you want it to. And with its gorgeous high-grade aluminum body, you will be wanting to use it as often as possible. It is gorgeous to hold and use.

 

By October 6, 2016 Read More →

Google Home in a nutshell

download-31Tuesday the 4th of October saw Google enter into a new domain, launching an item of hardware that intertwines all of the smart technology brands they have been purchasing for the last number of years and packaging them up into a neat solution to become a central feature of your home, Google Home. What this boils down it is that Home is a voice-controlled speaker. As highlighted by the Google Pixel, launched the same day, Google Home is that it will be powered by Google Assistant. This app is Google’s updated  smart digital assistant, much like Apple’s Siri, Microsoft’s Cortana, or Amazon’s Alexa, and will help you get things done. Current Android users will know saying “Ok Google” to their phone provides much functionality, this does that and much more.

 

The hardware on display is a small, minimalist cylinder with an angled top. The bottom part of the casing is modular and can be replaced with bases of varying colours. Above this is white with four LED lights built into the slanted touch sensitive surface. Google mentioned the design is based on wine glasses and candles. No hardware specs have been confirmed for the innards.

Google Home works a speaker, it will streams audio over Wi-Fi, using your voice or smartphone as a control mechanism. Imagine the Chromecast functionality for music. So far only Google Play Music, Spotify, Youtube Music, TuneIn. iHeartRadio and Pandora have been mentioned as compatible. We would expect other sources to work when the Home ships worldwide. You’ll also be able to connect to multiple Home speakers at the same time too, so you should be able to create a Sonos-style multi-room system with relative ease.

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You’ll also get some home automation features, which means you’ll be able to control various connected products around the house. Much like the Audio side, only a few brands have been mentioned, Nest Thermostat, Samsung SmartThings and Philips Hue lightbulbs. IFTTT is listed so the potential is almost limitless!

Will the Google Home be a hit or the new Nexus Q? The price of $129 seems welcome and if you have Nest or Hue Lightbulbs it might be a no-brainer. However, I feel for many it might be an impulse purchase and will probably will only really benefit the family with the most hectic of schedules or perhaps Google Employee themselves.

By September 28, 2016 Read More →

Griffin Survivor Power Pack Review

fullsizerender3Never in the history of everything have we been more reliant, more dependent on electronic devices. Separation anxiety caused by being without your mobile phone is now a recognised stress condition! So, you left the house this morning, but you forgot to charge your phone – how will you ever know what your Instagram friends had for lunch or what the latest viral cat video is?

You need a mobile power pack!

Thankfully there are roughly a bazillion models available in every imaginable shape, size and capacity. But what happens if you run up mountains for fun, or a much more likely situation; you find yourself miles from home during the inevitable zombie apocalypse? Then you need the Griffin “Survivor” Power Bank. The secrets in the name folks!

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Griffin touts this as the Chuck Norris of battery packs due to its super rugged features. It’s drop proof from a height of 2m (we’ll see about that), as well as being water, dust and zombie blood resistant thanks to being fully encased in a textured rubber exterior and port cover. The corners have a good bit of give in them to cushion impacts, so it’ll be useless as a bludgeon, but at least you’ll always be able to upload those skillful headshot videos for “Zombie kill of the week” contention.

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On closer inspection, I noticed that the rubber isn’t actually bonded to the unit, but more like a form fitting case. Where the opening is for the ports, the rubber can easily be pulled away from the unit, so water could get in and get trapped in there. The port cover does fit snugly, but as pointed out in the unboxing video, the lifting tab does make it easily removable and I imagine it could be easily snagged, although, after a fortnight of bouncing around in the bottom of my bag, this only happened once. Mercifully I was not wading through a swamp or anything at the time and my office has only the usual type of pre-coffee zombies. I did try the drop test 3 times from around the 6-foot mark and the Survivor did indeed survive with only minor scuffing to the rubber housing. Really the only area of potential wear and tear vulnerability I see is the port cover and its little rubber retention piece.

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The 10,050mAh Griffin is obviously larger than its peers because of the additional layers of protection, but it is still easily portable at 265g and the ability to just throw it into a bag and forget about it is a big bonus. Griffin makes several claims on the packaging – 2 hour charge time, 5 phone charges etc. In my (zombie-free) testing, I found that when using standard USB ports on my work PC or an iPhone plug, the charging took a lot longer. You’ll need to up the power supply if you want to get anywhere close to the 2-hour claim. Charging a two-year-old 1,810mAh iPhone 6 with a bog standard apple cable took around 90mins to get it from 15% to full, which was a little underwhelming. This is definitely a workhorse rather than a thoroughbred. I managed to get 4 full charges and it ran out of juice at 60% on the 5th. Depending on the size of your phone, your mileage may vary. It has the, now obligatory, tiny LED light for illuminating the 2 feet directly in front of you. These lights have become standard on battery packs now and are handy for when you are digging through a bag at night trying to find something, but really, little else.

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Compared to its rivals, the performance is distinctly average. The equivalent capacity Anker will charge your device noticeably quicker and cost a heck of a lot less at £15. The Survivor is priced at £56 although it can be found for £47.50 on Amazon (mainland delivery only – sorry Northern Ireland) but it’s somewhat hard to justify such a massive price difference just for the additional ruggedisation. But, and it’s a big but – the Griffin comes with a lifetime warranty! A modern electronic device, one that is designed to take some abuse and it comes with a lifetime warranty!! Unheard of!!! From their site, Griffin state that if you can provide proof of purchase and are the original purchaser, they “will repair or replace the product if due to defective parts or workmanship; it does not perform as specified.” It does not cover “misuse” however. But rubber can perish and batteries will die, so it’s a bold, yet confidence inducing guarantee by Griffin and I suppose this has to be factored into the price. Unless of course, Griffin means the lifetime of the owner and they know something we don’t………which brings us back to zombies…….

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By September 26, 2016 Read More →

Box Surge Smart Unboxing

image22Three plugs, four USBs, neatly presented with some stylish aluminium around the outside. That’s the Box Smart Surge in a nutshell. Milled on a CNC machine out of a single billet of 6061 aluminum. Four intelligent USB ports to the side of the Surge Unit to allow for simultaneous device charging.

Power often fluctuates during the day; this could be caused by high drain devices (washing machines, fridge freezers) turning on and off. I.T equipment contains sensitive microprocessors that can be damaged over time by these fluctuations in power. The MOV procession built into the Surge Smart protects devices from damage through both minor changes in power and catastrophic events like lightning strikes.

http://www.box-products.com/website/portfolio/aluminum-surge-protector-with-usb/

By September 23, 2016 Read More →

Box Car Smart USB Charger Unboxing

image20New in from Box is this rather swish looking Car adapter for charge your tech on the dashboard.

Four powered USB ports can simultaneously charge devices a single car socket. Delivering 9.6A, the Car Smart is capable of providing power simultaneously to 4 tablets (or any combination of USB powered devices).
The Car Smart features an intelligent charge circuit that automatically provides your device with the power it needs to safely and efficiently charge.

https://www.ukmeds.co.uk/surgical-face-masks