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Action cams are the big thing at the moment. They offer excellent filming quality but are rugged and waterproof giving opportunities to film in water and rain.
The Toshiba Camileo X Sports Camera is no exception, it packed masses of features in a great quality camera but at a much lower price that the competition.
Hear what I thought of the camera by listening to the stream, full review due soon!!
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This week it’s back to smaller gadgets which brings us to Smart Phones. HTC has been a big player of since the birth of the device category years back. HTC are well known for their high quality aluminium designs with bright screens and fast processors. They have also been one of the leaders in innovation with camera technology with their F2.0 ultra pixel sensors.
Today I chat to Mark about the HTC One M9 which takes the HTC One design and brings further improvements. Listen in to the stream and find out all about the device. A full review will be published here soon.
I would like to thank Three, who supplied the phone for review, It was pleasing to see the 4G icon displayed on the screen and network performance was excellent both using the handset and streaming audio to the Volvo V60 D6 and Audi A3 Sportback etron the phone worked a treat #makeitright
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This week, we chatted about the Fujifilm X-A2 Mirrorless Compact Camera. This is a camera that is aimed at the mid point of the market, but has the features of the ‘X’ series .
We have the camera for a few weeks and will be revisiting it shortly to find out if it lives up to it’s hype.
Thanks to Fuji for the loan of the camera, they have been extraordinarily helpful as ever.
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This week I talk to Mark about a bunch of amazing products supplied to me my D-Link. Specifically the myhome suite of products.
D-Link have taken a very intelligent view of home automation by not only providing a plug that can be controlled via a phone app from anywhere in the world, but also by adding sensible features to the product allowing you to monitor usage and also set switch on and cut off times via a schedule.
When used in conjunction with the Motion Sensor and Home Monitor, the smart plug can be programmed to switch on or off based on events triggered by motion (Motion Sensor and Home Monitor) and also sound (Home Monitor).
The Home Monitor is a very able HD streaming camera which as I have mentioned can be programmed to trigger other devices within your personal home network.
They are really very good devices and I would like to personally thank D-Link for sending the very helpful Robert to our offices to fully demonstrate their capabilities.
We will be fully reviewing the devices online shortly
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This morning I talked about a very useful dash-cam, namely the Transcend DrivePro 220 in-car camera. The camera boasts an incredible F1.8 low aperture super wide lens with a hefty 16GB memory card on-board.
The camera is however much more than simply a way of recording your journey (and any unfortunate events), it also features ‘lane departure warning’ and ‘collision warning’ and speed warning systems. I found it very able and the picture quality was outstanding.
If you would like to find out more, listen in to the link above and find out what I thought!
You can find out more information about Transcend and its other products by liking their Facebook page or following them on Twitter.
http://www.facebook.com/TranscendUK
http://twitter.com/Transcend_UK
Thanks to Mickaela Noone at Transcend Information Europe B.V for the loan of the product.
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There are two versions of the video, the first was produced by the Kodak software. You will notice the black bar, this displays because this area is not filmed by the camera.
(Kodak Rendered Video)
(This video was produced by YouTube’s utilty)
I was really delighted to be able to record todays episode of The Gadget Man in the studio with Mark Murphy. The camera is very easy to setup and get going, not so easy to get the footage onto YouTube, this however is more to do with Youtube.
I shall be reviewing the camera over the next few weeks, in the meantime enjoy the video. You will need YouTube of Android or Google Chrome to be able to see the 360 effect.
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This week we chat about the Soloshot2. Billed as ‘your robot cameraman’, it takes away the pain of filming your activities. It does this by tracking your movements using a remote wrist strap which is tracked by the main camera mount unit.
Below is some footage filmed using the Soloshot 2 a couple of weeks ago.
Thanks to William at Soloshot UK for his efforts!!
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This week, we take a step down from the Tesla Model S from last week and chat about the camera I used to take lots of lovely photos of the car, namely the Fujifilm XT-1 with 56mm F1.2 lens.
This is a lovely camera and the photos it captures are simply stunning. A full review is coming up later in the week.
Massive thanks to Jeannie Corby at Fuji for providing the camera and lens’s
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It’s been a great year reviewing such a wide range of gadgets from smart watches to high end sports cars. It’s been quite a ride, I’ve really enjoyed the whole experience, so thank you to all involved from BBC Radio Suffolk to the PR agencies and companies that have been so generous allowing me to try out all the wonderful tech!
This morning I spoke to Mark Murphy about my favourite gadgets of the year and the Gadget which won the gadget of the Year.
We have a lot of fun reviewing some smart wear. We reviewed the Samsung Gear 2, Sony Smartwatch 2 and Sony Smartband. My favourite was the Gear 2, purely for James Bond features. However we have been asking to review other watches, but none have been sent out. Let’s hope this improves next year.
Samsung Galaxy Gear 2 – Wearable of the Year 2014
Sony Smartwatch 2
Sony Smartband
We were never short of phones and tablets which is not surprising given the size of the marketplace. HTC, Samsung, LG, Asus, Nokia and Motorola all supplied us with review units. HTC phones exhibited the best built quality and screen sharpness. LG had the best screen of the two Quad HD displays (the other being the Galaxy Note 4). Motorola was the best value for money with it’s Moto G.
Overall, our favourite handset started and remained the Nokia Lumia 1520. A six inch incredibly vibrant screen, superb battery life and exquisite camera. Although very large, it was by far the nicest of the all the handsets we reviewed
We also reviewed three tables, the Samungs Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2, the Nokia Lumia 2520 and the Asus Transformer. The Tab Pro 12.2 was our favourite with massive 12.2 inch screen with better than HD quality, the Nokia 2520 with Windows 8.1RT on board was close behind.
HTC One M8
HTC One Mini 2
Nokia Lumia 1520 – Smart Device of the Year 2014
Sony Xperia Z2
Moto G
Samsung Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2
Nokia Lumia 2520 Tablet
Nokia Lumia 630
Asus Zenfone 6
Asus Transformer
LG G3
Asus Zenfone 5
Samsung Galaxy S5
Samsung Galaxy Alpha
Samsung Galaxy Note 4
We reviewed a number of cameras this year, as expected the GoPro models come ahead of most others for their durability and quality of movies and photos. The Samsung Galaxy Camera 2 was excellent and was a fully functional Android device to boot. The Sony Actioncam was good, but kept fogging up which spoilt most of it’s footage. The Autographer was…. weird.
GoPro Hero 3+ Black Edition – Camera of the Year 2014
Samsung Galaxy Camera 2
Sony Actioncam
Autographer
BT Homecam
GoPro Hero
Selfie Stick
I loved reviewing the electric bikes this year. I started out with the mindset that electric bikes would be a welcome relief from simply reviewing mobile phones for a year, but I ended up extending my ‘E’ vehicle reviews to cars. It was thoroughly interesting and liberating to get out in the Suffolk countryside and off the beaten track to test out these bikes. The Sparta is not really designed for off-road, but was capable and fast used for travelling to work. The Smart Ebike was fabulous and I loved every minute of using it, especially off-road. The Batribike was excellent in every area, I only marked if down for off-road use, but this was a little unfair as it had road tyres.
Sparta Ion/RX+
Smart Ebike – Ebike of the Year 2014 – Joint Winner
Batribike Granite Pro – Ebike of the Year 2014 – Joint Winner
This was an amazing experience from the beginning. The Renault Twizy was small and exciting to drive, but really only designed to replace moped type use. The Renault Zoe was an excellent car, out of all, this was the one car which could truly offer and alternative to fossil fuelled cars both in size and price. The BMW i3 was interesting and very fast. Design wise it hardly resembled an standard BMW but it was high spec and beautiful to drive. The BMW i8 was outstanding to look at and drive. It was like sitting in Red 5 at the end of Star Wars Episode IV, and the most exhilarating drive so far (electric car wise). I didn’t get to test the Tesla Model S this year, but in a week or so, I am looking forward to reviewing it.
I also got to experience 3 AMG ‘normally’ aspirated vehicles. I say normal, there was nothing normal about these vehicles. I experienced the G63 (G Wagon), the S63 and the C63 Edition 507. The C63 was simply mind shattering. When a manufacturer electronically limits to the top speed to 171mph, you know something is afoot.
Renault Twizy
Renault Zoe
BMW i3
BMW i8 – Car of the Year 2014
I got to test out other gadgets and gizmos, ranging from domestic gadgets to toys and drones. The drones were fun, but in some cases difficult to control. The Ankidrive was fun and the Samsung Smart TV with Soundbar was very cool indeed. However, by far the best gadget we tried out was the iRobot Roomba 880. This is a fantastic vacuum cleaner and has remained in use at least three times a day since July this year. It does a brilliant job of vacuuming up just about any type of debris on any surface. It was fantastic!!
iRobot Roomba 880 – Winner
Samsung Smart TV and Soundbar
Ankidrive
Parrot AR.Drone 2.0
Parrot Jumping Sumo
We’ve certainly tried and tested many gadgets this year. Some were disappointments, some were surprising successes. But at the end of the year, you simply have to hand the Gadget of the Year award to a recipient that deserves it for providing above and beyond expectation. With this in mind, we simply have to award the Gadget of the Year Award 2014 to iRobot Roomba 880. It’s a fantastic piece of equipment which has genuinely helped us around the house.
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In the last gadget slot before Christmas, I talk with Mark Murphy about the GoPro Hero, GoPro’s entry level action camera.
We discuss the merits of such cameras over using a mobile phone and likely uses.
The GoPro Hero is lower end in performance and functionality compared to the GoPro Hero 4, but coming in at a quarter of the cost, it’s certainly worth looking at, it’s waterproof to 40 meters and has excellent optics as you would expect from GoPro.
Don’t expect bluetooth or Wifi though, but it has amazing functionality and build quality for the price.
If you are looking to buy one for yourself or a loved one, they are currently stocked by Currys and Argos or from Amazon
in the UK for approx £99.99 (click on the company link to be passed to their website).
