Innehållsförteckning för Issue 190 från T3 Australia

With the vinyl revolution in full swing, surely vintage ‘record parties’ will grow in popularity too. And being the distinguished host that you are, you don’t want your guests sneering at your sub-standard turntable, do you? Well, there’s no chance of that happening with this stylish spinner. To mark its 100th anniversary, Danish audio expert Ortofon has teamed up with Austria’s Pro-Ject to produce the Century, a record player based around the former company’s esteemed Classic SB, but with additional features. Built upon an elegant piano-black and silver aluminium chassis, it oozes sophistication without being showy. And the sound it produces is equally refined, thanks to the inclusion of a pre-installed Ortofon Concorde cartridge, pure silver coils that deliver superb conductivity, a precision-balanced TPE-damped aluminium platter and ultra-low-friction tonearm bearings.…

1 APPLE PRO 11 PRO MAX /11 From $1,749/$1,899, apple.com/au It’s new iPhone time, and Apple’s latest batch of high-end phones doesn’t disappoint. The list of upgrades isn’t that big compared with last year’s iPhone XS models (in a lot of ways, this feels like an XSS), but they still add up to a brilliant package, especially for people upgrading from an older model. The key new features are the screen and camera. The displays (5.8 inches on the 11 Pro, 6.5 inches on the 11 Pro Max) now feature OLED tech that beats your average TV, with a peak brightness of 1,200 nits, which gives you unbelievably HDR performance. This could seriously be the best device for watching movies that you own, especially with the new Dolby Atmos-enabled spatial…

ARTECH 900A PEAK CAR JUMP STARTER Jump-start your car up to 20 times per charge with this 18,000mAh capacity beast. Battery level is shown on the display, and built-in safety features include protection from surging. $59, amazon.com.au SHADOWHAWK TACTICAL X800 RECHARGEABLE LED FLASHLIGHT Keeping a torch in your car is a must in case you break down. This 2,000-lumen tactical torch works in temperatures as low as -20°C, and has a five-tooth attack head to break glass. Its modes include SOS (strobe). $25, ebay.com OUTXE W20 WIRELESS POWER BANK This 20,000mAh capacity power bank charges two devices at once and has a built-in wireless charging pad and solar panel. $79, amazon.com.au…

HOKA ONE ONE EVO SPEEDGOAT The Evo Speedgoat is the latest iteration in this popular line, and has a highly technical spec. With the same Speedgoat three high-cushion, high-traction base with a race-spec woven upper of high-tensile synthetic fibre strands, the EVO means business. $300, hokaoneone.com.au INOV-8 ROCLITE G 315 GTX Not only a race-tuned thoroughbred, but also boasting some fine technology, the Inov-8 Roclite G 315 is a beast on road and path alike. With a waterproof Gore-Tex membrane and a futuristic super-grippy graphene sole unit, this is truly a running shoe for ‘diverse terrain’. $200, inov-8.com ADIDAS TERREX SPEED GTX SHOES Watertight, road or trail ready and no embarrassment up the pub afterwards, the Speed GTX have you covered round the clock. A Continental Rubber outsole grips in…

ARCHIE SPENCE, RANDWICK Q How would you choose good speakers? A Guru could fill a book with this stuff, but let’s boil it down to the most essential parts of the buying equation. Don’t spend thousands if you’re driving a hi-fi worth hundreds, as high end speakers will highlight every ugly imperfection on the other end of the cable – though do give yourself some space to upgrade your audio gear in the future. GaGu won’t put a number on it, but you’ll probably want to invest 30% of your hi-fi spending on speakers? Maybe 60%? Make your own mind up, reader – Guru is not, despite what those boys in the playground might say, your mum. There’s also power and impedance to think of, and how strong your speakers…

Melissa Gregg is a Senior Principal Engineer at Intel, and whose work involves researching how people use their devices, and working that into Intel’s strategies. She’s part of the team developing Project Athena, a template for a new generation of laptops designed to address recent changes in how we work as a society. Do you think there’s an important distinction between a more traditional computer with a full interface, and simpler devices or appliances that have invisible software? I think that there’s an interesting continuum right now where the visibility, or the literacy required of computing, is much broader than it once was. It’s very easy to talk to an Echo or a Google Home. It doesn’t require you to have a great deal of programming knowledge in order to…

Eric King, General Manager, Amazon Alexa Europe, has been helping to grow Amazon’s voice services ever since it first opened the system up to developers, and has led the charge for growing the range of Alexa Skills and hardware partners for Amazon Voice Services that have defined Alexa’s rise to the top of the voice-assistant charts. Are there areas of the tech world that you think voice control would be suited for, but it hasn’t really permeated yet? Where we see customers adopting voice most aggressively and at the fastest rate is in areas where, frankly, it makes their lives easier – where life is easier when you don’t have to fumble for a phone in order to do something. We see our next logical advancement to that happening in…

Apres Ski is a strange time. Shorn of the heavy ski boots and layers of clothing, it’s time to relax – but not too much. It’s also a time that the Merrell Thermo Rogue 2 is ultimately designed for, though they’ll happily turn a hand to any other winter footwear needs. You’ll recognise the winchlike BOA fit system from high-end snowboard boots. It does a grand job of sealing out snow, spindrift, water and debris alike. A superb sole unit upholstered with Vibram Arctic Grip will keep you right-side up, and a Flexconnect Midsole means there’s less imposing mountain boot rigidity and plenty more comfort and warmth. A 200g fill of Primaloft Gold Aerogel is stashed in the boot liners, not only providing very robust insulation, but also flexing and…

Clement Wong is Huawei’s VP, Global Product Marketing, and has spent decades working in the digital and mobile industries. He’s been at Huawei for seven years, helping to steer its growth worldwide from a relatively unknown Chinese brand into a gadget juggernaut. How do you think the physical form of phones will change in years to come? When you look at the trend in the last 10 years, people keep making the phone compact and sleek, but the display is huge. But there’s a little bit of a difficulty, because if you keep the display huge, the phone won’t be very light or compact. So that’s why the foldable phone is coming out. I think some more variable devices are coming out, too. So I think ‘foldable’ and high-speed connectivity…

1 RavPower 2 Coils Wireless Charging Stand Power up any phone that supports Qi wireless charging (which is most wirelessly chargeable phones) and keep the screen in view. The RavPower 2 Coils stand provides up to 10W of power and really looks the part. $75, ravpower.com 2 Apple HomePod With seamless Siri and Apple Music integration, the ability to tune its audio output to best suit the room that you’ve put it in, and the quality aesthetics that Apple is known for, the HomePod really knows how to impress. $469, apple.com/au 3 PowerColor AMD Radeon RX 570 Red Dragon Don’t let the relatively low price put you off, because this PowerColor graphics card most definitely packs a real punch – 4GB of video memory, 2,048 stream processors and a 1,250MHz…

$349 garmin.com Around the size of a matchbox, the Garmin Dash Cam 66W is beautifully compact and can be hidden neatly behind the central rear view mirror of most vehicles. It’s nearly identical to the excellent Dash Cam 55 in size and appearance, down to four buttons on side for controlling the menus, plus a two-inch display on the back. And there’s the connection for Garmin’s windscreen mount, which is one of the simplest but best-engineered systems we’ve seen. It comes with 1.4m and 4m USB cables to power it, plus an adapter for your car’s 12V socket, which has two USB ports, handily. Video is constantly recording and is split into files each 60 seconds long. Once your microSD card gets full, the oldest videos will be recorded over…

You might not be able to guess by looking at its traditional exterior, but the e-tron is unlike any Audi that’s come before. In fact, the e-tron (from around $140,000) is the first all-electric car from the German brand, yet is designed to feel familiar to Audi drivers, helping to make the switch from fossil fuel less intimidating. Everything about audi’s new car is designed to help it power through the air smoothly, with bulky wing mirrors quickly ditched in favour of narrow, aerodynamic cameras. These beam images of what’s behind you to two interior OLED displays. It’s futuristic and takes some getting used to. The interior feels familiar, bedecked with typical Audi style. Not surprisingly, technology takes centre stage with a plethora of displays (some of which have haptic…

The Theragun has been storming Instagram with videos of muscles rippling beneth its percussive blast, and now you too can enjoy the benefits of the technology. Essentially a high-speed professional muscle massager, the theory is that by rapidly ‘percussing’ a tired muscle, lactic acid can be processed faster, blood flow increased and pain reduced. The gun-like configuration means specific pain spots or muscle groups can be addressed, speeding post-workout recovery. It’s available in a range of configurations and price points.…

Although arguably New York hogs the spotlight when it comes to big US cities, Washington DC is attracting a growing number of tourists, lured in by its beautiful parks, stunning architecture and brilliant nightlife. 2020 marks the 100th anniversary of the start of prohibition, and amazingly DC had more illegal drinking dens during this time than it had legal bars pre-prohibition. That’s why we suggest heading to one of the city’s many speakeasies. Our favourite is Chicken + Whiskey (chickenandwhiskey.com) at 1738 14th St NW. Feast on chicken upstairs before entering this hide-away bar via a fridge to drink the whisky reserves dry. Consider Manchester to escape the Aussie heat. Autumn sees the arrival of boutique cinema chain Everyman Cinema in the city, and there are several anniversaries to mark…

MOTHER! Ignore its shaky initial reviews: there’s a reason Darren Aronofsky’s psychological horror, new to Netflix, has divided audiences so strongly – it’s a difficult brain-melter. BUSHIDO: WAY OF THE WARRIOR Poke around in Amazon Prime and you’ll find some hidden gems, like this entertainingly silly and sweaty (fixed) precursor to today’s MMA. SLOW RADIO BBC Radio 3’s podcast does what it says in the title. It’s super-chilled, relaxed, leisurely, and other synonyms for calm – unhurried field recordings for quiet moments.…

The only other folding phone worth taking note of right now is the Huawei Mate X, which is said to launch before November, but without any stronger confirmation than that, yet. It takes a very different design approach to Samsung’s: it has a single screen on the outside, which wraps all the way around when you fold it. This gives it some clever features (like a camera selfie screen), but may also leave it more prone to drops. There are some question marks over the Mate X still, the biggest of which is that it looks unlikely to have access to Google’s apps and services, due to US/China trade issues. Huawei has also said there may be plans to put the company’s next-gen Kirin 990 processor in it, but this…

F1 Technical Director Pat Symonds has seen a lot of changes in motor racing during the course of his many years in the business. Safety has been one of the biggest areas of improvement, but as we are often reminded, motor sport is still very dangerous. Accidents can and do happen, although each time something tragic happens there is always something that can be learnt from it. Symonds has also been instrumental in attempting to level the playing field with new regulations and a budget cap on the building of F1 cars due for 2020. Ultimately, though, Symonds thinks there is plenty that has filtered from the wild world of F1 down through to our everyday production cars. Symonds, now in his sixties, is still hugely passionate about motor racing…

$599.99 www.gopro.com/en/au With the action-cam space filling up fast, the premium-priced Hero Black expands and improves on the foundations of what it has always done really well - capture impressive video - as well as create an attractive proposition to the VLOGers and content creators of the world. The 8 Black has seen a few design refinements, most notably in the mounting system. The mounting fingers are now built into the chassis itself, doing away with the need for a clunky cage. Dimensionally the unit is a smidge wider and taller than previous, but has a slightly slimmer profile thanks to a new Corning Gorilla Glass lens cover, which also boasts twice the impact rating. Over on the right side of the cam is a removable door where the battery,…

Your luxury watch of needs some special accessories, including a handsome watch winder. There are loads to choose from, but recently our head has been turned by the SwissKubik by Lucrin Watch Winder. Housing a super-smooth rotating mechanism – built using the highest-quality components from the French auto industry and powered by a USB-rechargeable battery – this funky accessory will help your timepiece deliver accurate timings from morning until night, each day of the week. The SwissKubik’s graceful efficiency is only part of its appeal; available in a plethora of luxury materials, from crocodile-embossed calfskin to ostrich leather, not to mention 68 eye-catching colours to suit your personal style or to pick up on a colour hue within your watch strap, this premium gadget exudes a charm that is –…