Innehållsförteckning för Issue 201 från T3 Australia

1 MACBOOK PRO (2021) From $2,999, apple.com/au The novelty of Apple first designing and then building its own processors has worn off. It’s not simply a novelty any more: it’s a full-blown revolution. The MacBook Pro now firmly removes Macs from the ‘buy if you prefer macOS to Windows’ category and places them firmly in the ‘just plain better’ camp. The stats don’t lie. The chip at its heart – either the 10-CPU core, 16-GPU core M1 Pro or the 10/32 Max, depending on your spec – makes for a truly superior processor, firmly outclassing the already superb M1 and (though we can’t exactly compare apples-to-apples any more) seemingly flattening both AMD and Intel’s latest offerings. It’s not all about the guts, though. Apple has marked the occasion of its…

SEAN CONNERY The first reference to a specific Bond watch was made in Ian Fleming’s second book, Live and Let Die, in 1954. It was a Rolex. Fleming himself also wore one, more specifically an Explorer I. So it was no surprise when Sean Connery sported a Rolex in the very first Bond film Dr No, an early Submariner 6538, also known as the ‘Big Crown’ due to its very prominent winding crown. First produced by the company in 1955, and only manufactured for four years, this watch has become known as the James Bond Submariner. The highly collectable 6538 was also worn by Connery in From Russia with Love and Goldfinger. Good condition examples of this limited edition watch have sold for over $730,000 at auction. GEORGE LAZENBY Following…

With a bigger and better screen, plus new fast-charging capabilities, the Apple Watch Series 7 is more convenient and easier to use for even more people. Combined with all the smart features and health/fitness options the Apple Watch already has, we think it’s the best the company has produced so far. There are few flashy new features here. By far the most notable change is the new screen, which is 20% larger by area than the screen on the Apple Watch Series 6. To accommodate it, the bezels have been shrunk to 1.7mm, so it looks more than ever as if the pixels reach right to the metal frame. The new larger screen on the Apple Watch Series 7 is interesting, because the pitch here is not just ‘more screen…

APPLE MAGSAFE CHARGER Effortlessly snapping on to your iPhone, the MagSafe charger will provide 15W Qi charging without you having to worry about perfectly aligning your device. And it will happily charge non-MagSafe devices wirelessly too. From $65, apple.com/au AIRPODS PRO While their ‘pro’ credentials have been slightly upstaged by more expensive, audiophile-pleasing buds from Sony, B&O et al, these are a great balance of audio quality, noise cancelling and price that make them very hard to beat. $399, apple.com/au MUJJO LEATHER iPHONE 13 PRO CASE Made with high-quality leather, this case offers your iPhone premium-feeling protection. Not only does it come with a lip around the screen and camera lenses to prevent scratches but it has a built-in wallet that stores three cards. $69, mujjo.com…

The new iPad mini is a pocket rocket of a computer. It’s got the power of a laptop but is smaller than an A5 notebook. It’s got a bigger screen, better stylus support, much faster processor, improved cameras, more advanced connectivity and it’s incredibly light. The power-packed tablet is more capable than ever but you will have to pay a little extra for the pleasure. The 64GB model is $749 while the top of the range 256GB adds $230 to the price. And if you want 5G it’s also an extra $230. But you are getting something special. The most obvious update is the design, which switches to a new look with slimmer bezels and rounded corners. The edges of the iPad are now flat, which means a smaller body,…

The iPhone 13 is a worthy step forward, delivering smart and genuinely useful upgrades where they’re most wanted. Apple hasn’t tried to throw in some whizzy new feature or design just for the sake of it – it’s focused on making sure the iPhone delights you where it can, and doesn’t disappoint where it shouldn’t. Despite not having the stainless-steel bands of the Pro models and having a glossy rather than matte glass back, the iPhone 13 still feels like a premium device. The plus side of not having the steel bands of the Pro model and using aluminium instead is that it’s lighter than the Pro – it weighs 173g, while the iPhone 13 Pro weighs 203g, and you’d be amazed how much you notice that 30g difference. It’s…

It’s summer, so you’re all outside running around getting fit and tanned. Right? Well, you can’t spend all your time getting fit and having fun. There’s important fun to be done inside, too. Like slouching around watching TV. After all, there’s so much good stuff to watch and you’d hate to the one only one in your WFH chat app that hasn’t seen everyone else’s favourite new show. No one wants to be that loser – so – do it right, with a fabulous new TV, like the selections we have in this issue. You can get top-line tech for surprisingly little these days, and as everyone knows dropping “yeah, I have a big cool new TV” in your Slack channel or Microsoft Teams room has far more cachet than…

HUBLOT, BIG BANG UNICO BERLUTI ALUMINIO 44 MM The worlds of watchmaking and shoemaking come together. The result is a stunning satin-finished and polished titanium case with a dial that features genuine Berluti patinated Venezia leather. $38,000, hublot.com SWATCH, 1984 RELOADED Offering reinterpretations of some of the early Swatch watches, but featuring a unique mix of ceramic and bio-sourced plastic derived from castor oil to deliver a robust, lightweight, and thoroughly modern timepiece. $120, swatch.com RADO, TRUE SQUARE OVER THE ABYSS Rado‘s newest addition to the True Square Collection is a design collab with New Delhi artist duo Thukral and Tagra. It highlights our temporality and highlights the importance of connection with others. $4,500, rado.com VICTORINOX, MAVERICK Reinforcing its popular Maverick Collection with five new timepieces, our pick of the…

Picking up a tablet might at first seem like an unnecessary luxury when you already have a smartphone, but you’d be surprised at just how many apps work better on a bigger display – that extra screen real estate really comes in handy for reading emails, browsing the web and working on documents, and of course movies and television shows benefit from the additional space too. Actually, when you think about it properly, there aren’t many tasks that are more suited to a phone than to a tablet... it’s just that a tablet can’t fit in your pocket, so it’s difficult to take around with you all day. Perhaps taking photos and making calls are best left to phones, but for everything else a tablet really shines. What’s more, this…

The quality of your affordable tablet experience will ultimately depend on the apps you install and run – and the good news is that, whichever tablet you pick, you’ll get a selection of superb apps right out of the box. Streaming services are of course a must, if you can afford the subscription fees: think Netflix, Disney Plus, Prime Video, Google TV, Apple TV Plus and YouTube. On the music side, Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Amazon Music, Deezer and Tidal are all well worth exploring (and some give you free tiers). Gmail, Outlook and Apple Mail can take care of your emailing needs, while Google Docs, Sheets and Slides are great (and free) options for productivity. If they don’t tempt you, Pages, Numbers and Keynote are free alternatives from…

Do you want comfortable headphones with excellent noise cancelling, a clean balanced sound and bass performance that will let you listen to your music for hours, and hours, and hours? Then the Bose QuietComfort 45 could be just what you are looking for. Replacing its predecessor, the Bose QuietComfort 35 II, after four years, they do not disappoint. Straight out of the box you get the headphones, a zipped travel case to keep them in, a 3.5mm to 2.5mm audio cable to manually connect to devices, a USB-C cable to charge them and a Quick Start Guide to help you get set up. So what’s new? The design hasn’t had a massive overhaul but the small changes Bose has made make the headphones look that little bit more premium. Available…

Most smartphones look more or less identical. They are often samey slabs of glass that don’t really have much to set them apart physically. The Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 is definitely not one of those. It looks completely different and it’s a really good-looking phone. Naturally, when you fold it up it does feel quite thick. Measuring 72.2 x 86.4 x 17.1 – 15.9mm, it does add some bulk to your pocket but it’ll still be small enough to fit into it in the first place. At 183g, the Samsung Galaxy Z Flip 3 5G weighs the same as a regular smartphone, which makes it just as comfortable to use and hold. One of the biggest changes is the build quality. Like the Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 3, this…

The Apple of action cams has done it again, iterating enough to be certain that there is a perceptible improvement, but not enough to hinder sales of the older, now slightly cheaper model. We gave the HERO 9 Black five stars, and it’s still a fantastic camera, but the HERO 10 Black is better in multiple ways. It’s visually identical to the groundbreaking GoPro HERO 9 Black; the only obvious differences being the GoPro logo under the front screen is a natty blue and the body is slightly darker. Elsewhere, the similarities continue: the battery compartment, USB-C charge port, 1720mAh Lithium battery and battery lid could be the same components. The flip down ‘fingers’ to mount the camera are identical to the HERO 9 Black, which makes them backwards compatible…

Dash cams have become incredibly popular car accessories in recent years, keeping a faithful eye on the road ahead and recording footage when a collision is detected. Some even boast driver-assistance systems to help keep you alert and safe. With so many great models on offer these days, we figured you could use a hand picking out which suits your needs. But what if an incident happens behind you? Say someone drives into the rear of your car, but isn’t willing to accept the blame, or even flees the scene? This is where a second, rear-facing dash cam could come to the rescue, which is why we’ve also included two models that can watch your back. 1 COMPACT CAM GARMIN DASH CAM 66W $378, garmin.com Despite being small, the Garmin…

Our mission is to bring you the clearest recommendations we can – and that means a great deal of hard work happens before a product even reaches our pages! Because we only feature products the T3 team would happily use ourselves, we end up discarding a significant number of options in each category before settling on a final shortlist to review. We select only the best of the best for our Tested section; the gear we know you’ll want to seriously consider purchasing. And that should mean an end to you having to undertake hours of painstaking research and product comparisons. You won’t see any duff products, but you will come away with clarity on which one is the best in its category or for a specific task: our awards…

Jim Lee began his career as a music photographer during the early 1960s working with bands, such as The Who and The Kinks but he soon found his leaning veered towards fashion photography and his trajectory headed for the stars working alongside Anna Wintour for Vogue, Harpers & Queen and the New York Times. He helped to define the fashion aesthetic of the Swinging Sixties before he changed track and turned his hand to directing commercials and feature films in the 1970s. Lee’s photographic portfolio is lauded for its artistic merit, and it has earned him a permanent collection at the V&A. This image was taken on a Nikon F camera with a 200m lens. The model is Celia Birtwell and it was taken for designer Ossie Clark in 1969.…

APPLE AIRTAG Apple was late to the tag game but its billion-strong network of iPhones makes these an instant market leader The AirTag is exactly what you would expect from Apple’s first foray into dedicated tracking tech. A slick solid circle of Cupertino design, resolutely allergic to the idea of having an ugly hole for attaching to anything. But buy yourself an AirTag holder – no, you don’t need to go for the Hermès option – and the AirTag is very good at exactly what you want it to do. AirTag makes the most of Ultra-Wideband (UWB) tech alongside Apple’s Find My network to make sure you know exactly where your items or even pets are. At home this means the Find My app shows just how far away from…

The era of OLED laptops has arrived. Finally, those of us who have long relied on our notebooks for work, gaming and creative endeavours can now reap the many benefits of this new screen panel technology – eye-popping visuals, better efficiency, thinner form – in the compact convenience of portable PCs. So what exactly is an OLED laptop? Simply, an OLED laptop is a notebook fitted with a display that uses an OLED panel. Folks who aren’t too anxious to keep up with the latest and greatest might not care, but those who spend a great part of their day staring at a computer screen should. Short for ‘Organic Light Emitting Diode’, OLED is a type of panel that uses organic molecules, which enable its individual pixels to emit their…

JOIN THE DARK SIDE The beauty of OLED displays is that when they’re displaying black, they’re essentially displaying nothing. While doing so, they’re not consuming any energy, which can result in improved battery life. This means Dark Mode on Windows could be the butter to an OLED laptop’s bread. Samsung itself has said that OLED laptops can save up to 25% more display energy when used in dark mode. SLOW BURN Although experts have said that OLED laptops are less likely to suffer burn-in, there are also things you can do yourself to further minimise its likelihood. Switching up content every now and then is the one obvious way to do so, making sure that your screen isn’t displaying the same thing for too long. As is utilising a screen…

With the upgraded triple-lens camera system, the 120Hz ProMotion screen and the most powerful phone processor ever, the iPhone 13 Pro has blown past our expectations. It’s a great phone, ticking off almost all the things people wanted from the Pro this year, and improving all of the basics along the way. There’s no big design change for the iPhone 13 range, so the 13 Pro looks very similar to the previous model. There are giveaways though. On the front, the camera notch is not as wide – a reduction of 20%. It is still the same height though, so it doesn’t actually give you more screen space. It just means a bit more room for battery, Wi-Fi, data and network icons. That screen is still protected by the ceramic…

If you’re a first-time Switch buyer then the Nintendo Switch OLED is a nobrainer: it has had a shakeup when it comes to the display and there have been a few small design tweaks. But if you are considering upgrading your original Nintendo Switch then it’s not really worth it as they are very similar. The seven-inch OLED display is a beauty, even though the resolution is still just 720p. Games like Breath of the Wild really showcase the potential of the new OLED screen – it’s bright, colourful and the contrast has improved massively. Even on the simple Home screen, lettering comes across with clarity and colours are vibrant, popping out of the display. Where you really make the most of the new seven-inch OLED panel is in tabletop…

If you’ve had AirPods for years, love them, and are wondering whether the 3rd-gen model is worth it, the answer’s an easy yes. They feature more discreet buds, massively improved audio quality, and even more iPhone-friendly features. It’s what you like about the current ones, but made better in every way. Let’s get into the good stuff, then: the sound quality. The new AirPods sound excellent, and are a major and instant step up over the 2nd gen. The improvement seems to come from a more dynamic driver, because what you’ll notice immediately is how much clearer and brighter everything from the mid-range up is. It makes the earlier model immediately feel like the bass is actually weighing down the soundscape, and the treble is only just keeping its head…

Android 12, tons of incredible AIbased features, an excellent camera for producing pro-looking pics, a stunning display, an angular and a sharp design with a heavy focus on quality. What more could you want from the Pixel 6 Pro? The 6 Pro is sharp, sophisticated and sleek. The more mature handset of the 6 series, it brings with it a host of improvements. There’s a bigger 6.7-inch display, higher resolution, a bigger battery, more RAM, a third lens and a better front-facing camera. At 163.9 x 75.9 x 8.9mm, it’s a very big phone, but at 210g it’s not as heavy as you might expect. The large size means you get an edge-to-edge curved 6.7-inch OLED screen that is stunning. Boasting a QHD+ resolution (1440 x 3120) the display is…

SMARTPHONES Find the lowest prices at: t3.com/au/bestphone APPLE iPHONE 12 From $1,199, apple.com/au Apple has outdone itself. 5G has been added, the CPU has more power than you’re ever going to need, and the dual-lens rear camera system can take spectacular photos in any kind of light. ONEPLUS 9 PRO From $869, oneplus.com Very much an evolution of the OnePlus 8 Pro, with a similar design and iterative specs bump for this year, the OnePlus 9 Pro has doubled down on the camera. And the results are excellent. iPHONE SE (2020) From $679, apple.com/au Apple’s iPhone SE (2020) handset has taken this year by storm, the hot new handset winning acclaim worldwide with its balance of features, quality and performance for a very attractive…

ARES SUPER LEGGERA BY HPS There are many words we associate with ebikes. Effortless? Sure. Green? Naturally. Cool? That goes without saying. But a phrase we rarely associate with them is ‘light’. This is something Italian design firm ARES is aiming to change with what it claims is the ‘lightest ebike in the world’, the Super Leggera. Developed in conjunction with HPS, it weighs just 9kg, only a shade more than many gravel bikes, thanks to its ultralight carbon-fibre frame. To keep the weight this low, its Watt Assist motor supplies around 200 watts of power – meaning it will only offer you an assist up difficult hills, rather than making pedalling a thing of the past. But if you’re looking for a feather-light bike that only flexes its muscles…