Innehållsförteckning för March 2016 från Stuff UK

Brace yourself, because I’m about to use the ‘c’ word. The dirtiest word of all. The word magazine writers are told never to use. Here goes: ‘cheap’. We’re not supposed to call things ‘cheap’ because it’s seen as an insult, as if costing less was an admission of failure. But actually, I much prefer a real bargain to a finely honed piece of luxury, because a bargain is harder to make. It’s more difficult to invent something that works well and lasts a long time and costs very little than it is to make something that’s good and expensive. This also means that bargains are harder to find. Later on in this issue you’ll find loads of clever ways to bag a deal, but here’s one that works for anything:…

Vive is the most advanced virtual reality kit we’ve seen so far; with its sensorstudded mask it creates worlds you can actually walk around in… until you walk into the actual sofa. The original version guarded against this with a virtual wall, but the new Pre uses a front-facing camera that lets you see obstacles in the real world if you get too close to them while exploring the virtual realm. Throw in smoother controllers, a comfier headset and brighter screens, and you’ve got yourself this year’s most desirable holographic hat. Best move quickly, mind: only 7000 dev units will be made – and existing Vivers get first dibs. As hot as… not accidentally kicking the cat £tba / htcvive.com…

Can’t face the daily dairy stock check? You need to face up to your fridge phobia, human! Still, should you wish to prove once and for all that the light does indeed go out when the door closes, Smarter’s new Fridge Cam (1) will snap periodic pictures of your cooler’s contents and remind you when you’re running low. Throw in some Smart Mats (2) for weight-based ingredient updates as you stroll past the supermarket (using GPS) and a Smarter Detect (3) – a wall-mounted kitchen monitor that’ll tell you when the oven’s ready or the washer’s finished – for that truly connected kitchen experience. As hot as… a net-connected milk monitor £tba / smarter.am…

from US$1000 / razerzone.com Razer’s new gaming Ultrabook comes with an external superbrain Graphics grunt on the go Desktop gaming can be a real drag. Sure, you get the big-screen monitor and monster hardware, but you can hardly up sticks and shift to your mate’s house on the fly, can you? What you need is a portable yet powerful laptop. “Lol, m8, but lightweight l@ptops can’t do gaming.” Well, that’s where you’re wrong, m8. Meet Razer’s seriously sharp Blade Stealth, a 4K-equipped Ultrabook with an Intel i7 dual-core chip and 8GB of RAM. Oh, and it’s just 13.1mm slim. That’s thinner than two stacked iPhones – and a whole lot quicker. Not to be confused with an undercover shaver, the Stealth also offers a multicolour backlit set of keys so…

1 Open Road £free / iOS This app bids to unify music, maps and search in one iPhone interface, so as to stop you stabbing away at your screen as you scream through Spaghetti Junction. In-app purchase upgrades include driving metrics. 2 End Space VR £1.49 / iOS; £1 / Android It’s time to become either a VR game dev or a neck physio. Space shooter End Space works with Google Cardboard, or one of the other phone-based headsets, and it’s a lot of fun. 3 GoPro £free / iOS, Android Yet more ability to tweak your GoPro films comes in the form of Apple Watch remote control. You can change resolution, start and stop recording, add bookmarks and use the Watch’s screen as a viewfinder. 4 Garmin Connect £free…

Smart toothbrushes, smartwatches, smart locks, smart washing machines… almost anything you can name these days has been graced with sensors and connectivity powers. But are any of them powered by wee? Yes. Yes, they are. Scientists at Bristol’s Centre for Sustainable Energy have created a pair of socks that have an in-built wireless transmitter capable of sending a message to a PC, and there’s no battery in sight. The socks are embedded with microbial fuel cells that use bacteria to generate electricity from waste fluids. Waste fluids, in this case, being the wearer’s urine. Don’t worry – instead of letting loose and allowing it to flow freely down and saturate the socks (apologies for that image), it’s collected and transported to them via a series of soft tubes. A manual…

KICK STARTER You’re having a half FUBI FIXIE There are some wild and wonderful folding bikes out there that transmogrify themselves into a pocket in your handbag. Some of them are almost rideable. This Finnish project is coming from a different angle – namely, keeping the geometry of the unfolded bike as close as possible to that of a normal bicycle, so that riding it is comfy and natural. That means proper 700c wheels, conventional seat tube and handlebars. After all, most people only need a bike that folds small enough to get in the back of a hatchback, or to not get told off on the train. And that engineering simplicity also keeps the price keen. from €450 / fubifixie.com Smart, watch WANDERLUST POCKET WATCH Analogue is set to…

Ugh, looks invasive. What is it? It’s an electronic follicle projector. You get 100,000 of these injected into your specially shorn scalp and then, using an Apple Watch control app, you can project wild lightshow hairdos. Has to be quite a party, though: each tiny FLIR device is US$600, the installation process takes a week and the run-time of the system is just 120 seconds. Hang on, you’re pulling my… …hair, yes. Sorry, down to business: the FLIR Scout TK is a child-piloted whale exploration submarine. Good grief. Is anything you say ever true? Yes! The price below, which is accurate, and what it actually is: a handheld thermal monocular. Night vision used to be a bulky, exorbitantly expensive affair. FLIR became known in 2015 for developing a tiny sensor…

As everyone knows, being able to play the guitar is even cooler than being able to prune a shrub with your teeth. And in case you need a little help, the organisers of National Learn To Play Day – on Saturday 12 and Sunday 13 March – have got together with Fender to offer you the chance to win one of ten Squier® Affinity Series™ Strat® guitar/amp sets, each worth £185. On National Learn To Play Day over 150 music stores across the UK will be offering free taster lessons across a huge range of instruments. Fender will be hosting an event at Manchester’s Intu Trafford Centre on the 12th, in partnership with the Registry of Guitar Tutors (RGT). Complete beginners or lapsed players will be offered a FREE 15-minute…

Also buy in Jan… snow gear Second-hand gadgets January Everyone’s skint after Christmas, and with payday seemingly so far away lots of people try to offset the excesses of the festive season by clearing out last year’s gadgets (or selling any unwanted gifts). That means eBay is a good bet for some second-hand tech. If you’ve managed to put a few quid aside, this is the time to treat yourself to something new (to you). TVs February There are more TVs launched in January at CES in Las Vegas than any other time of year, but those new models take a while to hit the shops, so start keeping an eye on prices around February time. You’ll see the previous year’s models getting big reductions in order to make way…

THE YOUTUBE CHANNEL TRUEFIRE youtube.com/user/TrueFireTV There is an incredible amount of free content and tips on YouTube, but one top-notch channel is TrueFire. It hosts a vast array of professionally recorded vids, covering a wide range of genres. Paid memberships are also available on truefire.com, with dedicated style courses such as Rusty Cooley’s ‘Lickopedia’. THE MOVIE IT MIGHT GET LOUD £7 / iTunes, Amazon Instant Video To understand the guitar, it’s always helpful to see and hear how the great players approach the instrument. In this documentary The Edge, Jack White and Jimmy Page meet for a jamming session to discuss their influences and different playing styles. It includes some unintentional pointers on how to do a great guitar face. THE APP ONSONG £15 / iOS Bedroom guitarists used to…

For all that I’m pretty much obliged to fetishise the virtues of vinyl as a music storage format, I still have the bulk of my tunes (20,000 or so) stored on various iPods, laptops, smartphones and external hard drives. I love digital music for the same reason everybody else does: convenience. No matter where I am, I have a wealth of music at my fingertips – and that’s before I get all coy about how much money I spend on streaming services. There’s a big elephant in the digital audio room, though, and that’s sound quality. Compressing CD-sized, 16bit/44.1kHz files down to an iTunes-comparable 256kbps allows plenty of memory for more, but also emasculates the quality. And even if you do the right thing (by which I mean rip your…

1 TAKE A VR PHOTO Your friends have always appreciated your sun lounger holiday snaps – who doesn’t love hotdog legs? Now they can marvel at how nice your Spanish villa is in 360°, with some help from Google Cardboard: 1. Get some goggles. Firstly, make sure you or your photo recipient has a VR viewer for their Android phone. Either buy one from google.co.uk/get/cardboard or, if you’re handy with scissors, build one yourself from the site’s instructions. 2. Take your VR snap. Download Cardboard Camera (£free, Android), press the camera icon and turn around slowly, just like you would when taking a panoramic photo. Touch the equaliser icon to record some sound as well. 3. Share your holiday. There’s no sharing option within the app, so here’s how to…

I SAVED £175,000 ON VIRGIN GALACTIC… …by signing up for a ride on Alton Towers’ new virtual reality rollercoaster Galactica instead. Ever since I boarded the best ride ever made, Universal Studios’ now closed Back To The Future simulator, I’ve been waiting for theme parks to build a VR coaster. And Alton Towers has finally done it – kind of. Galactica is actually its existing Air ride, except riders get a perfectly sync’ed trip through the stars through a Samsung Gear VR headset. And all without the space sickness, hopefully. Mark Wilson, Features Editor I’M GOING TO SAVE £££… …by using this widget to monitor my car’s tyre pressures. Mind you, according to the internet, even tyres that are quite dramatically under-inflated only affect fuel consumption by a few percent,…

The Casio won one of our Stuff CES Wearable Tech Awards – see all the winners on p24 Back in the day, watches didn’t come much smarter than a Casio calculator. Much has changed since the heady days of go-anywhere maths, but the Japanese watchmaster still knows a thing or two about top-class tickers. Lugging duallayer LCD touchscreen smarts – one colour, one monochrome – to save on juice, its latest wrist-wrapper is a robust outdoor watch with trek-tracking tech that’ll keep you up to date on the weather and need-to-know notifications. Military-certified and water-resistant to 50m, yet still mic-equipped for Android Wear interaction, it’ll even tell you the best time to go fishing for that monster catch. As hot as… one-month battery life US$500 / wsd.casio.com…

It’s a well-known fact that good things come in cubes. Mr Rubik knew it. ITV knew it. Even Mike Oldfield loved the six-sided things but, alas, couldn’t find any cubular bells. Now Naim has picked up the cuboid remit and given it a shoebox-sized amping up. The new, smaller Qb box delivers 300 watts of room-rumbling sound by means of a digitally managed multi-driver setup that’s more than happy to take your tunes via AirPlay or Bluetooth, as well as playing well with Spotify Connect, Tidal et al. Controlled via a top-mounted touchscreen, it’s tough enough for even the clumsiest audiophiles thanks to its polymer casing. You go, cube. As hot as… an ice cube in a hot tub £tba / naimaudio.com…

#11 WIGIG & HALOW Fraser Macdonald Given that most folk can’t remember the password for their home Wi-Fi network, it seems unlikely that anyone would know what kind of Wi-Fi they’re using. The latest and greatest Wi-Fi standard is 802.11ac, so if your router is less than a year old it’s probably using that or, at the very least, its predecessor 802.11n. Why should you care? Because there are two new standards on the way that you need to know about. Got your data ducts open? The two new standards are 802.11ad, or WiGig, and 802.11ah, aka HaLow. Despite the similar codes, they’re very different. You won’t see them at the same parties. You’ll hear more about WiGig, sooner, because it’s almost here. TP-Link has announced a router that fires…

ROLAND TR-REC £free / Android, iOS Not a complex game, but it involves historic Roland synth sounds, which makes this a must-have for electronic music geeks. ROLI NOISE 5D £free / iOS Roli already makes a weird curvy MIDI keyboard, and now a weird keyboard app. The iPhone 6s’s 3D Touch enables a whole slew of effects. AUDIOBUS £3 / iOS Audiobus is a must-have app, combining the output from many music apps. It now has Ableton’s new Link tech, so your multi-app noise is always perfectly sync’ed.…

1 Tech21 Evo Sport Mesh Arrange in order of preference: 2m drop protection; exact colour matching to an Apple Watch Sport strap. Actually, have both! £30 / tech21.com 2 Knomo Mag:Case + Mag:Mount A little self-adhesive magnetic nodule comes with this case, so you can attach it to a kitchen cabinet or a bedside table. £30 / knomobags.com 3 Native Union CLIC Marble You can trust us to spot a trend: marble is the new carbon fibre. Expect racing yachts with marble masts by Easter time. £70 / nativeunion.co.uk 4 Casetify x Colette x Looney Tunes Casetify have drawn together an unlikely pair of collaborators in Warner Bros and French fashion house Colette. Works, though. £30 / casetify.com/colette 5 Apple Smart Battery Case An extraordinarily inelegant outing for Apple, but…

£5200 / nikon.co.uk Serious looks and serious price – but this Nikon is a photographer’s dream Big money Fancy dropping a full five grand on a new camera? “Not on your nelly!” you’re about to shriek, but wait a sec – the brainboxes at Nikon think they’ve made something worth every penny. Priced as strikingly high as it is, the D5 is clearly aimed at the dwindling few who still manage to make a living from photography, but the sweet spec list is likely to attract plenty of well-heeled amateur shooters too. On paper, it’s an absolute beast. 4K, all day For starters, it’s Nikon’s first ever 4K-capable DSLR, its full-frame 20.8MP sensor sucking up video at a pixel-packed resolution of 3840x2160 at your choice of 30, 25 or 24…

Best for... real-life guitar heroes Yousician iOS, Android Where Guitar Hero registered controller-based button-mashing, Yousician listens to the notes coming from a proper guitar. Game-like exercises and play-along tracks have you strumming chords and picking notes at precisely the right moments, and it’s free for a limited amount of time each day (unlimited access costs £15 per month). Snapseed iOS, Android Photo editor Snapseed has been around for years but just keeps getting better. The gesture-based interface is accurate and intuitive, and the way it turns each filter you apply into an editable layer à la full-fat Photoshop makes it genuinely powerful. The Android version now even lets you edit RAW files, so you can go out snapping and leave the laptop at home. Best for... digital DJs Pacemaker iOS…

FOR MATCHDAY PREP Football Manager Touch 2016 Sega’s latest crack at Football Manager for touchscreens has gripes aplenty — the game can be sluggish and complex, includes (optional) IAP, and has match graphics that seem to have been unceremoniously wrenched from a 1995 PlayStation game. But finally you get a full, deep PC-like Football Manager experience — without having to lug said PC around — and one that’s been suitably optimised for your tablet. Goal! Stuff says £14.99 / iPad, Android FOR GOING BANANAS King Tongue This one’s not so much Angry Birds as angry bananas. They’ve revolted and declared war on the monkeys, and happen to be armed with surprisingly hightech military kit, given that they are fruit. No matter, because your simian can strike back with what bananas…

£200 / store.nest.com ■ It’s been five years since people first started saying the phrase “nice thermostat”. Before Nest, they were just beige boxes that did a basic job of adjusting your boiler. And the company, headed by iPod impresario Tony Fadell, is still making the nicest thermostat on the market. Its latest model is the same but better: like many gadget upgrades it’s thinner, with a bigger, better screen, but it also adds some useful functions. ■ If you live in a big old house (congratulations on having the money to do that), you’ll know that older boilers and separate hot water tanks can mean waiting around for a shower. If you have this setup then the new Nest can learn your heating and hot water habits and control…

£650 / olympus.co.uk ■ Although Olympus’s OM-D range is traditionally aimed at pros, it has a lot of features that appeal to those without the bank balance to match. This is where the E-M10 Mark II comes in, offering swish tricks in a smaller, lighter and more affordable package. ■ It doesn’t feel cheap to use. It’s a real pleasure to wrap your fingers around, as there are customisable dials and buttons spread across the full-metal body. The bright electronic viewfinder is clear and lets you see how any changes to settings will affect the final scene. ■ With a 16MP Four Thirds sensor and the same image processor as the E-M5 Mark II, you really shouldn’t be disappointed with what this Olympus can produce. Detail is in abundance, while…

Mad Max: Fury Road The reboot is as bonkers as us fans of the originals could have hoped, but while Max isn’t exactly an antihero, Charlize Theron’s Furiosa certainly is. The first in command of nasty Immortan Joe’s war rig and overseer of horrific acts against his “five wives”, she eventually turns against the overlord. The Crow It may not have aged incredibly well, but The Crow remains a cult classic. Brought back from the dead so he can avenge his own murder and that of his wife, Eric Draven (played by Brandon Lee, who was accidentally shot and killed during filming) dons clown makeup and goes on a rampage of antiheroic proportions. Aguirre, The Wrath Of God Klaus Kinski comes across as a terrifying nutjob in all the films…

JOHN GRANT GREY TICKLES, BLACK PRESSURE Thanks to its mix of a wide-open soundstage, squelchy analogue synthesizer sounds and four-square rhythms and tempos, Grey Tickles, Black Pressure is a great test of the digital-toanalogue process. All of the machinery and metallic arrangements should sound human, and they can if they’re delivered properly. KENDRICK LAMAR TO PIMP A BUTTERFLY An absolutely withering low-frequency attack and some of the most mannered, idiosyncratic vocals ever recorded make this a brilliant across-the-board test for your new setup (if not exactly background cooking music). Thumping beats mixed with judicious mid-’70s afro-funk samples make for an absorbing listen that’s right up there with 2015’s best. TORRES SPRINTER Midway between vulnerable ingénue, avenging harpy and indie experimentalist, Torres puts the sort of light and shade into her…

Why try to compete with GoPro? Because if you’re going to mountain-bike down a mountain in a swarm of bears, you want 360°, 4K footage of the event, that’s why. Having turned its pixel-sharp paws to everything from rifle scopes to binoculars, Nikon’s decided it knows enough about making megapixel machinery to produce a radical rugged recorder. Combining images from two lenses on opposite sides of its waterproof body to create panoramic shots, the KeyMission can take more than a tumble or two as it captures immersive imagery… and you’ll be able to watch the result through a VR headset. As hot as… a desert in all directions £tba / nikon.co.uk…

Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it a surprisingly speedy wing-shaped drone? Oh, well, yes – it’s the last one. Bored of building iPad-controllable quadcopters, Parrot has gone and put together the 50mph Disco, a fast-flying, gyro-stabilised machine that wouldn’t look out of place at a Stormtroopers’ tea’n’tech party. Housing a 14MP camera for high-altitude action capping, its battery is good for 45 minutes of fixed-wing swooping and diving before it’ll need a visit to the plug. Even better, ham-fisted flyers are safe from a hefty insurance bill thanks to an autopilot system that’s avidly afraid of impact. As hot as… an unladen sparrow on speed £tba / store.parrot.com…

Time was when double-hinged hybrid laptops had fixings straight out of the bargain bin at Wickes. Nowadays, multi-talented ’tops are an altogether slimmer proposition: just take a look at Lenovo’s latest featherweight laptop. Backward-bending by way of a watchband hinge that’s destined to pull dog hairs and detritus between its gears, the Yoga 900S is about as slim as Windows 10 lap’n’tabs come: 12.8mm. As it weighs a gram less than a kilo, slippy fingers could see it blown afar on a summer breeze – though its carbon fibre construction should enable it to fend off obstructing objects. As hot as… Yoga’s fire log pose from US$1,100 / lenovo.com…

from £380 / pryma.com Gosh, they’re so… so… Fashionable? Yes, they are. These Italian headphones are designed to appeal to the kind of mix-and-matching music fan who has more than one bag and more than one pair of shoes. Consequently, the leather they use is all-important – it’s the same, says Pryma, as the wellknown handbag brand Bottega Veneta. You know them, right? Wait, more than one pair of shoes? Yeah, apparently not everyone gets their footwear through Amazon Subscribe & Save. Now, the right leather is one thing, but Pryma also offers you the ability to properly colour-coordinate by buying additional headbands at €89: coffee, pure black silver, pure black gold, dark grey or marsala, a kind of dark cherry red. With a straightforward twisty buckle, you can have…

Badland 2 £3.99 / iOS It’s the return of the flappy blob, able to grow, shrink and multiply itself in an attempt to navigate through a maelstrom of side-scrolling death machines. The original’s unique silhouetted visuals remain, but the full-colour backgrounds look even more sumptuous. As before, though, you won’t have much time for sightseeing. Despite a modicum more left/right control over your character, the levels look to be just as devious and dastardly – with more coming as free updates, in case you were thinking £4 was a bit steep for a mobile game. Other platform availability hasn’t been announced, but we’d be very surprised if it didn’t appear in the next month or so.…

Best for... checking Amazon Bargain browser plug-ins These three internet tools will equip you with cash-saving info Get an Invisible Hand Price comparison sites are hardly new but InvisibleHand makes the whole business more streamlined. It works with Firefox, Chrome and Safari, and will alert you if a product you’re looking at is cheaper elsewhere (although it doesn’t take postage into account). It also works with flights, hotels and rental cars. It’s worth cross-referencing what you find with Google Shopping. £free / getinvisiblehand.com Hitch a ride on The Camelizer If a deal looks too good to be true, it often is. Install The Camelizer in Chrome or Firefox and, when you’re on an Amazon product page, you can summon up a load of stats on how its price has fluctuated…

Best for... free kicks PES 2016 PS4, PS3 In recent years Pro Evo has been fighting something of a losing battle against the bank-rolled might of its rival from EA. But rather than trying to beat FIFA at its own game (although that game will continue to be computerised football, not kabaddi or water polo) Konami has changed tactic this season, releasing a free-to-play version of PES 2016. Obviously it’s not as complete as the full version but it’s not just a glorified demo either. You can play exhibition matches with a choice of seven sides, including Bayern Munich, Juventus, France and Brazil, or take on its Ultimate Team-style myClub mode, which lets you assemble your own squad. More importantly, this year’s is the best Pro Evo game since its…

Carrot Weather If you’re bored with sensible, practical forecasts, install Carrot for added snark. A tetchy, malevolent AI dishes out twisted animations along with rainfall and temperature predictions. You can store multiple locations (past, present and future) and discover secret places, but take care to never poke Carrot’s ocular sensor! Stuff says £2.99 / iOS The Weather Channel From an app standpoint, The Weather Channel is best described as adequate — and ad-infested. But if you’re only properly fulfilled when an actual human delivers a weather forecast, this app is packed with videos. Just don’t blame us when you soon buy a new Subaru. Stuff says £free / Android, iOS, Windows Phone Dark Sky The app that kicked off hyper-local forecasting, Dark Sky remains a must-have download. Swipe between a…

Moto 360 Sport What’s the deal? Motorola’s not-quite-round-faced Android Wear wrist companion has been given a sporty upgrade. Answering calls for more fitness-based brains in its flagship watch, it has squeezed standalone GPS, a hybrid display and a dedicated running app into a new one-piece silicone shell that’s splashproof and suitably sturdy. Is it any good? For runners with an Android phone, it’s sort of good. Phone-free GPS is a godsend for lightweight run tracking, as is the ability to stream beats to Bluetooth headphones. Better still, the new hybrid display means stats from the Moto Body running app are easy to see. It’s backlit in dim conditions and has sun-reflective screen tech for when you’re out pavement-pounding at high noon. Unfortunately, the battery woes of the standard 360 remain,…

THE BASICS ■ Find a teacher. As useful as YouTube is, nothing beats having someone experienced guiding you and correcting technique issues early on. Check the Registry of Guitar Tutors (rgt.org) to find a local instructor. ■ Choose the right axe. Feel is important, so visit a shop and play a few until you find one you like. If you want to play heavier styles, make sure it has humbucker pickups. ■ Go unplugged. We’re talking mostly about electric guitar here, but by all means start out with a cheap acoustic – it’s easier to move from one of those to an electric than the other way round. ■ Practice makes perfect. You need to develop finger strength and muscle memory. Start by playing for 15-30 minutes each day, then…

ANTI-VILLAIN The anti-villian is an antagonist who isn’t entirely unsympathetic. They may have a moral code that lifts them above being pure evil. Or, like Hannibal Lecter, some are very charming. See: Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight MANIC PIXIE DREAM GIRL Coined by film critic Nathan Rabin, who describes the MPDG as “that bubbly, shallow cinematic creature that exists solely to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life”. See: Sam, Garden State WOOBIE The classic Woobie is a suffering character who elicits a strong nurturing or protective response in the viewer. In other words, they demand to be wrapped in a blanket and fed cookies. See: Wall-E, Wall-E…

MAIL OF THE MONTH Q GURGLE SEARCH Stuff, over the years you have been responsible for many happy purchases in my household, including TVs, consoles, home cinemas and many more. However, now a new challenge awaits me: the imminent arrival of my firstborn child. What advice can you offer during this hour of need? John Wilkins A John, if there’s one thing we learned when we had our first baby (aka the Nano edition), it’s that gadgets can indeed ease the journey into parenthood. Take the Withings Home (£120, amazon.co.uk), a smart cam with a baby monitor mode complete with lullabies and nightlight. And once little John Jr/Jennifer has grown up you’ll be able to use it for security. Good luck! ALWAYS ON CALL facebook.com/joinstuff • @stuff TV google.com/+stufftv •…