Tag: xmas

As you know, Dummy and I are constantly on the lookout for good-value, great gadgets. Are you stuck for gift ideas for the tech-lover in your life? Look no further. Dummy has already offered you his “top five” list; here’s mine.

Network-enabled media streamer: Roku LT

I’ve yet to review this device, but I bought one earlier this year, when Roku discounted them from £50 to £35. They’re not quite that cheap now (up to £45), but they’re still great value, very competent devices.

Roku’s set-top boxes appeal to me, because rather than buying one of those super-expensive “smart TVs” (like Dummy did), instead for a relatively trivial sum, you can upgrade virtually any television with this small, unimposing gizmo. There are a few different media streamers in the series, but this bottom-of-the-range LT was more than sufficient for my needs – to stream media (from a wireless network connection) to a 32 inch television. The LT offers 720p HD video and has a super-low power consumption profile.

The idea is that you add various different “channels” from Roku’s huge library, which includes iPlayer, Demand 5, 4oD, Plex, Netflix and a host of others. The LT’s big brother, the 3, has more tricks up its sleeve, like a wired ethernet port, USB in, headphone socket on the remote (genius!) and games. I needed none of those though and have been absolutely delighted with the LT.

If Roku doesn’t quite float your boat, you might want to consider an Apple TV. More expensive, feature-for-feature, but simple to use and well-appreciated by all its owners.

Low-cost hobby PC: Raspberry Pi

As you might have noticed, we’re real fans of this British innovation. You are more or less limited only by your imagination. People are using Pis to run media centres, provide home surveillance, as a web server, for time-lapse photography, as a custom games console, and on and on. Prices start from about £24 for the model A, but I recommend starting with the B for the best experience.

Great value tablet: Nexus 7

This is a close call. There are more and more tablets on the market these days and the quality is increasing as manufacturers weed out early production problems. You won’t get anything that I’d call “great value” from Apple or Microsoft, so that leaves us with the Android platform. And wow, there’s an awful lot of choice now.

I’m torn on this one. Amazon is pushing out better and better Kindles at keener and keener prices. The Kindle Fire HD is a serious contender for this top 5 list – £120 now; that’s a bargain. But ultimately, the fact that the Nexus 7 doesn’t need to be hacked (“rooted”) to get the best from it means that this tablet is the better choice in my opinion. You can pick one up for under £200 and I don’t think anyone could be disappointed to find one of these in his or her stocking.

Portable Bluetooth speaker: Soundwave SW100

I’ve had more than six months with this speaker that I reviewed back in May this year. I just can’t fault it. Great at what it does and a real steal at £20.

Budget Android phone: Huawei Ascend Y300

In an extremely saturated market, it’s really hard for one phone to stand out from amongst the crowd. If we’re going to continue the theme of great value for money though, I think you can’t go wrong with the Ascend Y300 from rising star Huawei. Under a hundred quid. It’ll do the job. And if you’re buying for someone who’s a little accident prone, better this than a four hundred quid Galaxy S4 (which is a really great phone by the way, but expensive).

Here at Geek & Dummy we have reviewed varied products this year and if you’ve been following our blog, you’ll have noticed that Geek and I have differing tastes and requirements from our tech. Here are my top 5 products of the year, largely based around their impact on me. As you know, I’m a bit of a… well a dummy, so to appear on my list a gadget needs to be one of those tech products that basically works out of the box.

Synology DS213J 2 Bay Desktop NAS Enclosure

I’ve been using NAS type devices for many years now but this truly IS the daddy. NAS or Network Attached Storage is a system of 1 or more hard drives, a network connection and an operating system. It connects to your network, allowing other devices on the network to access and share files from a central location. Traditionally, quite a dumb device, these have now evolved considerably. The Synology comes with a veritable “app store” of free products to help you backup, stream media and download torrents. All this and RAID too, to ensure your valuable data is as safe as it can be.

The stand-out feature for me is DNLA. Put simply, with my Samsung Smart 3D TV on my home network, if I drop a a picture, some music or a film on the Synology box, my Samsung TV immediately sees it and I can access and watch it. Pure genius. The only thing to remember is that the purchase price doesn’t include the hard drives you will need. When I bought my Synology NAS it worked out a lot cheaper to go and source (high quality) hard drives rather than take a pre-configured bundle. I opted for these WD 3TB SATA III Caviar hard drives: fast and quiet and at the right price!

PowerDirector 10 Video Editing Software

I’m an amateur film maker and this year I discovered PowerDirector 10. Having played with iMovie and Windows Movie Maker I was looking for some software to take me to the next level but with that all-important Dummy proviso: it must work out of the box without requiring a degree to understand it.

I have to say it’s revolutionised my film editing. With some interesting sound editing capabilities built in, this year PowerDirector has helped both my Geek & Dummy and my 4×4 film viewing figures to soar. I particularly like the way it lets you create and edit mini slide shows within your film. The image enhancement options have rescued some dark and otherwise unusable footage on more than one occasion. This is my fav film from this year created with this software. The only downside is it is a resource hungry animal and you’ll need something pretty powerful to run it properly. I’d recommend something like the Lenovo Ideacentre K450, with stacks of RAM, storage and video oomph.

Kodak Playsport ZX5 and ZX3 Action Cameras – Amazon for ZX5 but eBay for ZX3

For the second year running these amazing little cameras have proved to be my mainstay action camera. I stumbled on them absolutely by chance and have since bought 7. They are relatively cheap and I have been buying both the ZX5 and the ZX3 (the latter second hand on eBay). They are essentially the same camera but the older ZX3 has a removable battery and to be honest, I quite prefer the older one because of that. Other than the battery they take exactly the same images and that Kodak lens is amazing. It completely puts to shame the very expensive and industry standard GoPro in the image and even sound department.

Where the GoPro and indeed most action cameras require a secondary housing to make them waterproof and shockproof, the Playsport range in standard guise does all that as standard. Believe me I have tested them to near destruction on many occasions during the year. I took one on holiday with me this year and it made a fantastic underwater film without the need to add a cumbersome case.

Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ48

This is the second of three cameras to make my short list this year and another that has helped me improve both my stills photography and my video photography. Originally when I bought the Lumix Bridge camera the theory was I needed to progress beyond a standard happy snapper but not go so far that I’d need to spend an hour reading a manual every time I wanted to take a picture. This camera has a top quality lens and a very simple dial that allows you to alter settings quickly to match the type of photography you’re taking.

Whilst I didn’t consider this aspect when I bought it, to my amazement the video functions of the camera are also fantastic. Often you find that the video features are a bit of an afterthought on stills cameras and are low quality. Not so with the Panasonic and whilst it can be difficult to hold steady, the clarity of the video images is the best of any camera I own, probably thanks to the quality of its lens. Read my full review here.

Drift Ghost HD Action Camera

So to my last but definitely not least tech buy of the year. When I originally reviewed this action camera I was in two minds about it. In fact when I re-read my review I’ve been down right uncharitable. Looking at the facts, its  expensive compared to the Kodak range and straight out of the box the image quality, mounting set-up and operation are all a bit of a pain. Keeping to my Dummy ethos, it felt like a bit of a hassle to be honest.

Having now lived with it for a month or two, boy is this a piece of kit. It seems that the issues I had filming in low light are resolved by a slight tweak to the aperture settings. Bluetooth connectivity to my mobile phone turns out to be a great, though rarely used feature – I can view what the camera sees, on my phone. The remote control is a revelation for action camera photography; by making it so much easier to switch on and off this vastly reduces the amount of boring footage I have to edit out. You’ll need to buy a decent class 10 microSD card to get the best from it, but they have come right down in price now.

Ok; all of this comes with a £250 price tag (Geek & Dummy do have a 10% discount voucher for the first lucky reader requesting it) but for the time it saves me and the quality of the images I’m now getting, it’s worth every penny. In fact do you know what, I’m getting another one for Christmas!