Privacy features your smart home security system must have

With so many devices online in your home these days, that’s a lot of data about you and your loved ones, from your daily routines to your actual floor plan. The privacy settings on your connected devices are important, especially when it comes to cameras. Which is why Ring’s privacy is worth understanding before you buy, rather than after.

You install a camera or a video doorbell specifically to protect your home and the people in it. The footage it captures deserves exactly the same level of care.

Ring (which is owned by Amazon) is one of the biggest names in the home security camera landscape, and its stated mission is to make neighbourhoods safer. That’s why, Ring says, it builds devices on three privacy pillars:

• Privacy and security (built in from the start);
• Customisation and control (made easy for the user); and
• Transparency (about what happens to your data, who can see it, and what gets done with it).

So that’s the mission, but how well does it hold up in the real world? Let’s dig into how Ring helps keep your data just as safe as your property.

What Ring camera privacy looks like in practice

When it comes to Ring cameras, privacy is a deep design decision, not a feature bolted on later or upgraded. Though, of course, your Ring camera and system can be upgraded as software improves.

Nevertheless, privacy starts with where your camera footage is stored. Ring cameras and video doorbells don’t keep recordings on the device, but rather upload them to the cloud. You access the footage via a Ring Protect subscription (Ring Solo covers a single device from $4.95 a month and Ring Multi covers unlimited devices in 1 location from $14.95 a month).

Yes, that’s an ongoing cost, but there’s a real security upside. If someone pulls your camera off the wall or scurries off with your Recording Hub, they’ve stolen your hardware and your footage. With Ring, your footage is still sitting in your account, and you can even watch the camera get stolen to help identify what happened.

Ring encrypts all video as it gets sent up to the cloud. But from September 2026, Ring is going further with TAKE (Throw Away the Key Encryption), a new standard for default video encryption and customer control in home security.

With TAKE, your Ring videos are protected with unique, rotating encryption keys. A copy of the keys is temporarily held inside a secure enclave in the cloud, but Ring can only access them to power the intelligent features you have active on your account, like Smart Alerts. After that, Ring throws away and deletes the keys. Only you, and any trusted Shared Users you’ve chosen to enable, retain the keys to your video on your enrolled devices like your phone, tablet, or computer.

Think of it like house keys. The company that made your lock doesn’t keep a copy of the key. You might give a spare to a close friend or family member you trust. And if a handyman needs to fix your sink, you lend them a key only for as long as the job takes, then get it back. TAKE works the same way: you hold the master key to your videos, and you decide who gets access and for what purpose.

TAKE will roll out in phases starting in September and will become the default encryption for all Ring customers worldwide when fully rolled out.

For those who want even more control, there’s also optional end-to-end encryption (E2EE). Ring was the first major smart home security provider to offer video E2EE back in 2021. With E2EE enabled, only your enrolled devices ever have access to your encryption keys. When you use this feature, nobody in the middle can decrypt those recordings, including hackers who might somehow breach the servers, and, for that matter, not Amazon or Ring either.

Now, this is an opt-in system rather than default because, since the key never leaves your phone, a few conveniences are switched off. Shared users can’t view encrypted video, you can’t pull it up on an Echo Show or on the web, and you can’t share clips as a link. The trade-off, however, is tighter security, which might be what you need, depending on your household. The important part is that this Ring camera privacy feature is there ready for you to use.

Ring camera privacy vs traditional CCTV: what’s different

Old-school CCTV (that’s closed-circuit television, to you youngsters) wrote everything to videotape, and today’s systems use a hard drive in a cupboard. That sounds like the private option, but in fact a recorder sitting on your home network (especially with a factory password) is a straight-up soft target.

Anyone who can reach the box can watch everything on it, and if the box itself gets stolen or the drive dies, your video footage is gone too.

With a modern connected camera such as a Ring, recordings are encrypted and held off-site associated with your account, and every sign-in to that account is checked. Yes, you’re trusting Ring with your video and privacy, so let’s look at how the control Ring gives you makes that work.

Setting up your Ring camera privacy preferences

Ring has your footage in the Amazon cloud, so it’s a good idea to be more than familiar with Ring camera privacy controls.

In the Ring app, these settings are accessed via the Control Centre. Here you can see who has access to your system, which devices are currently signed in, how long footage is kept before it’s deleted, and what your cameras have recorded. You can adjust all of these, and of course delete footage manually at any time.

An important feature is the ability to set Privacy Zones. You can black out specific areas of a camera’s field of view so these areas are never recorded. This means your camera can watch your driveway without also filming the neighbours’ front door or their back garden. Nobody likes a snoop!

This system also applies indoors. You can set up an indoor camera to monitor the hallway and the back door, while keeping other living areas out of frame. That important hallway (which will show who is accessing the house) stays covered, while your private life stays private.

Ring camera privacy doesn’t just rely on clever software, though. There’s a low-tech option too: Ring’s Indoor Camera (2nd Gen) and the Pan-Tilt Indoor Camera, both ship with a manual Privacy Cover.

It slides across the lens to block the camera, and it hits a physical switch to turn the microphone off too. So if you’re home for the weekend, just slide it shut. A real psychological benefit is that you can no longer see the unblinking eye of the camera lens. And when you go away, slide the cover off again, and the camera will go back to doing its job. Naturally, if you’re away from the property, you can check the app to see if the cover is on or off.

How Ring camera privacy helps you keep your household safe, together

Security works better as a group effort, so a system that only one person can operate isn’t the best fit for an entire household. No one wants to have to constantly call dad to check a camera or adjust a privacy setting.

You have a main Ring account that gives you total control, but you can also nominate Shared Users. These accounts are meant for partners, older kids, or even housemates, and let these trusted individuals check live views and recordings without needing to know the main account password. The main account controls which devices each Shared User can see, and you can use the Control Centre to add or revoke access at any time.

A small caveat: shared users can’t access footage protected by the optional end-to-end encryption setting, so if you switch E2EE on, shared users lose access to that encrypted video. However, with TAKE as the new default, Shared Users retain full access to your video, so you get stronger encryption without sacrificing the convenience of household sharing.

Ring camera privacy is heavily boosted by account security. Two-step verification is mandatory on every Ring account, so a stolen password on its own isn’t enough to get in. And when somebody does sign in, you’ll get a notification, and Ring blocks login attempts it doesn’t recognise. Control Centre also lists every phone and computer currently authorised on your account, so you can block anyone who shouldn’t be there, or any device you don’t recognise.

Transparency is Ring’s promise that camera privacy is a priority

It’s one of the tenets of the modern world: encryption and privacy zones can only be thought of as protecting your family if you can see how the company behind them operates. It’s important to always keep in mind: Ring camera privacy applies to a range of products, and all these products are cloud-connected cameras. Which means trusting Ring and Amazon with your video.

Ring publishes a privacy notice in plain English covering what its devices collect and why. That’s pretty standard stuff. Something a lot of people forget about cloud cameras is what happens when the police or other government agencies demand access to that footage.

You can see Ring’s camera privacy policies on this issue via the app’s Control Centre. There’s a Public Safety section setting out where the company stands on law enforcement requests. Generally, footage isn’t handed over without a valid legal order, with a narrow exception for emergencies involving a risk of death or serious injury.

Another important issue is how long your camera gets security updates via patches and firmware. Ring commits to software security updates for at least four years after a device stops being sold as new, and again, the app Control Centre shows you the status for every device on your account.

At the end of the day, if you’re relying on a Ring camera for privacy, you know what’s collected, how long it sticks around, who can ask for it, and whether or not the cameras themselves are still safe to use.  

A comprehensive privacy ecosystem

Home security is worth taking seriously, and the hardware is only half of it. A camera that watches your front door but treats your data casually isn’t doing the full job; it’s just moved the risk somewhere else.

What you need is privacy built in from the ground up. That means encryption on by default, real control over what gets recorded and how long it’s kept, clear management of who can see what, account security that doesn’t just require a good password, and a company willing to tell you how long it will keep supporting the device.

Ring camera privacy means all of those things and more. It’s a coherent multi-layered system of hardware, software, and security policy. That means you can protect what matters most, without compromising your privacy to do it.

The post Privacy features your smart home security system must have appeared first on GadgetGuy.

Read More

Steam Frame starts at $1,609, VR headset on sale soon

Valve’s VR headset, the Steam Frame, is finally an actual product about to go on sale to the masses. Following the recent launch of the Steam Machine, once Valve’s wearable device is out, it’ll mean everything announced late last year will have seen the light of day.

Designed as a standalone VR headset with two wireless controllers for playing games, the Steam Frame also connects to other devices via an included 6GHz dongle. Valve advertises the device as a PC in its own right, able to install games and apps directly to the headset, like the Meta Quest 3.

Using custom pancake lenses, the Steam Frame provides a 2160 x 2160 resolution to each eye via an LCD screen. Refresh rates between 72Hz and 144Hz are supported, with a 110-degree field of view visible when wearing the device.

On the inside, Valve’s VR headset is powered by a Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 chipset, with either 256GB or 1TB of internal storage, expandable via a microSD card slot. It also uses a 21.6Wh Li-ion battery, which some early reviews found lasted less than an hour on some games. The included controllers run on a single AA battery, which Valve claims lasts up to 40 hours.

Out of the box, the Frame supports black-and-white passthrough, letting you see what’s in front of you while wearing the headset. Full colour passthrough requires an optional $235 camera attachment.

Steam Frame Australian price

Now listed online, the Steam Frame comes in two configurations, priced in Australia as follows:

• 256GB kit: $1,609
• 1TB kit: $1,969

Apart from the internal storage, both models have the same specs. They also come with a digital copy of the VR-exclusive Half-Life: Alyx.

However, Valve doesn’t ship a power supply with the Steam Frame. It says that any 45W USB-C charger will do the job, including the charger included with the Steam Deck. Alternatively, Valve sells a power supply unit for $49. Other accessories include an optional $99 ergonomic kit, replete with additional straps for the headset and controllers, and an $89 replacement kit for the in-box accessories.

For those keen to grab Valve’s VR headset, the company is once again employing a reservation system. Aussies can join the list by 2:30 AM AEST on 18 September. After that, Valve will email those randomly assigned to purchase the device. Valve used a similar approach to manage demand when it launched the Steam Machine a few months ago.

Pricier than the $969 Meta Quest 3 and the $569 Meta Quest 3S, the Steam Frame isn’t positioned as an entry-level device. Perhaps the AI-driven global memory shortage has wrought havoc on the pricing, much like Valve conceded it did with the Steam Machine.

The post Steam Frame starts at $1,609, VR headset on sale soon appeared first on GadgetGuy.

Read More

EZVIZ HB90 Dual 3K Kit & EP8 Ultra review: Subscription-free security

8.4

EZVIZ (pronounced “EasyVis”) recently launched a range of home security cameras, doorbells, smart locks and control panels. Keen to see how one of the world’s best-selling smart home brands compares to the rest of the market, I tested the EZVIZ HB90 Dual 3K Kit security camera and the EZVIZ EP8 Ultra video doorbell. I found they both have a few tricks up their sleeves.

It makes sense to review these two products together. If you install a home video security camera solution, you will likely have more than one camera, so I also looked at how they work together.

Table of contents

• EZVIZ HB90 features
• EZVIZ EP8 features
• Specifications and price
• Using the EZVIZ cameras
• Who is the EZVIZ HB90 Dual 3K Kit and EP8 Ultra for?

EZVIZ HB90 Dual 3K Kit features

The EZVIZ HB90 Dual 3K Kit is a weatherproof, wireless, solar-powered, spotlight dual-camera system, with both cameras able to rotate and record continuously in 3K. Having two cameras is common, but having two cameras that can rotate is less common. The benefit is that both cameras can capture video separately in different directions and over a wider arc than a single fixed camera.

Whilst 360-degree capable, most will mount this camera on a wall or the corner of a building, so your practical viewing angle will be 180 to 290 degrees. The lower camera can pan, tilt, and zoom, allowing it to track a person, for example, walking across your front garden. The HB90 can digitally zoom the image up to 4x. You can save preferred camera view positions for quick access.

Image: EZVIZ.

The package includes mounting hardware and a drill template to assist installation, a USB cable, a 16GB SD card, and an 8W solar panel. You can mount the camera on a wall, ceiling, or pole. You must also mount the solar panel, preferably facing north. Depending on your camera settings, you will need at least 30 minutes of direct sun a day to run the camera continuously.

Always on Video (AOV) allows continuous recording, but in time-lapse until movement is detected. It captures one frame per second until movement is detected; then the camera bumps that up to 15 frames. This means you always get the shots before and after a detection, giving you the full story that would traditionally be out of the camera’s trigger range. Continuous recording has traditionally been the domain of a mains-powered camera, but the HB90’s 10,400mAh battery and solar panel enable wireless connection. 2.4Ghz Wi-Fi 4 provides the internet link.

With AOV, you see the delivery man approaching the house (blue). Without it, you just see the grey area. Image: EZVIZ.

AI-powered shape detection is built into the cameras, meaning you can receive alerts for humans and vehicles. To take this to the next level, you can also add familiar faces to the app. Once the camera recognises them, your alerts become more descriptive. E.g, wife detected.

At night, two built-in infrared lights provide a black-and-white image up to 35m away, while a trigger activates the spotlights and changes the image to colour. An optional alarm can also trigger both a siren and flashing lights. Alternatively, you can trigger a customisable voice alert, or use the app for a two-way conversation from anywhere you have internet access.

EZVIZ EP8 Ultra features

The EZVIZ EP8 is a battery-powered dual-camera video doorbell with an interactive display, built-in lights and an included chime.

The EP8 comes with 32GB of built-in storage, two 9,600mAh batteries and an installation kit. This lets you install it wherever you choose, without power cords. Anti-tamper protection means others cannot easily remove the doorbell.

Image: EZVIZ.

The first thing you notice is that the EP8 has a screen that displays one of three cartoon characters. My first thought was that this was a gimmick, but what it does for a visitor is provide a visual indicator that you have been detected in a user-determined friendly or, alternatively, a cautious representation. This same screen also enables two-way talk and video between your doorbell and the app. This means you appear on the video doorbell screen.

Two-way video and talk. Image: Angus Jones.

The doorbell has a movement detection sensor with a range of 6m (adjustable down to 2m), which is advantageous if your door faces a busy street. Two 2K cameras allow a forward view and a downward-facing view. The downward-facing camera is designed to track packages. The EP8 records starting a few seconds before a trigger and continuing until it no longer detects a person. This ensures it captures the full story.

Dual camera view. Image: EZVIZ.

Like the HB90, the doorbell camera will recognise familiar faces and packages. The smart package detection will also recognise and alert you if a package is removed. This helps you understand if a theft has occurred. You can customise a recorded message that the doorbell broadcasts after a set time, such as “please leave the package next to the front door”. The app even lets you disguise your voice.

The built-in lights illuminate when movement is detected, ensuring a clear colour video recording and providing light for your visitor even if you don’t have mains lights installed. Infrared lights also provide a black-and-white image for live video reviews without a trigger. The included chime will signal when someone presses your doorbell, in addition to your app notification. All family members can receive alerts by downloading the app. The EP8 can also trigger a chime on Amazon Alexa devices and even an old-style electric chime (8-24v)

EZVIZ HB90 & EP8 specifications and price

Specification	EZVIZ HB90 Dual 3K Kit	EZVIZ EP8 Ultra
Resolution	2880 × 1620 at 5MP	Main camera: 2464 × 2464 at 6MP Bottom camera: 1920 × 1080 at 2MP
Field of view	Top camera: 110 degrees diagonal Bottom camera: 60 degrees diagonal	Main camera: 162 degrees diagonal Bottom camera: 88 degrees diagonal
Networking	Wi-Fi 4, 2.4Ghz	Wi-Fi 4, 2.4Ghz
Size	Camera: 135 × 136.5 × 229.5 mm, 890g Solar panel: 267.3 × 186.5 × 17.5 mm, 428g	120 × 103 × 190 mm
Price (RRP)	$549.95	$399.95
Website	EZVIZ Australia	EZVIZ Australia
Warranty	One year	One year

Using the EZVIZ cameras

When you buy a security camera solution, you look at the specs and read about video playback and AI smart features, then take it home only to find out you may get certain features only if you pay an extra monthly subscription. The big difference with EZVIZ is that you get all of the functionality for one upfront price. Yes, you can pay for cloud storage as well, but you don’t need it, since the cameras include onboard storage and AI capabilities. A cloud storage solution starts at $9 a month, meaning you still have the images if someone steals your camera.

The idea of receiving a security alert seems great until you install your cameras. What you think might be a rare event that you react to can quickly become a constant alert that can tend to make you ignore them.

The first step is to set up your cameras properly. If you live near a busy road or footpath, you don’t want an alert when every car or person walks by. Instead, go into the settings menu and set up what areas (in the camera’s view) you want alerts for and, with the EZVIZ AI, whether you want vehicle alerts, etc. You can further adjust this with intelligent alerts such as familiar faces.

Other brands offer AI functionality but charge extra for it as part of a monthly subscription. EZVIZ includes the AI functionality at no extra cost. In fairness, others offer more with their AI, but this is simply a software upgrade, and EZVIZ may offer more functionality over time.

EZVIZ app. Screenshots: Angus Jones.

For my testing, I set up the pan-and-tilt camera facing down my driveway and the doorbell at my front door. To enter my property, you must walk up the driveway. The dual camera does a great job detecting and tracking a person as they walk toward the camera, turn right, and go up the stairs to my front door. Unless someone wants to climb fences, no one is going unseen. Once the visitor reaches the top of the stairs, the doorbell camera takes over and also does a great job monitoring packages. A feature I would like to see is the ability to group the camera and doorbell images into one event rather than two separate events.

The front of my two-storey house faces south. For Australia, this is problematic for solar panels. In my case, no sun gets on the solar panel. This means no charge, and the battery depletes after a week when AOV is turned on.

If you put a camera in a high-traffic area, such as a driveway, and then, for example, wash the car, you will get many alerts. Some brands offer an alert snooze feature (for example, pause alerts for 1 hour). EZVIZ does not offer this function.

Who is the EZVIZ HB90 Dual 3K Kit and EP8 Ultra for?

If you want the latest security camera features, including smart alerts and panning cameras, but don’t want to pay monthly subscription fees, EZVIZ cameras are a great option. Their prices are competitive, and the setup is relatively simple.

The doorbell offers a personal touch with the built-in screen, and the security camera, with its two swivelling cameras, provides the ability to monitor and record more movement, even in two directions at the same time. Although relatively new to the Australian market, this is a brand to watch.

EZVIZ HB90 Dual 3K Kit & EP8 Ultra

Paired together, the EZVIZ HB90 Dual 3K Kit and EP8 Ultra are a potent subscription-free home security system.

Features

9

Value for money

9

Performance

8

Ease of use

8

Design

8

Positives

Built-in storage and AI features (no subscription needed)

HB90's two rotating cameras are convenient

EP8 Ultra's two-way audio and video is handy

Negatives

No snooze function on alerts

8.4

The post EZVIZ HB90 Dual 3K Kit & EP8 Ultra review: Subscription-free security appeared first on GadgetGuy.

Read More

Laser Digital Calendar review: Save the day

8.7

Bringing order to the chaos of busy households, the Laser Digital Calendar shows you your schedule at a glance.

As a great man once said, life moves pretty fast. It’s especially hectic if you’re constantly rushing children between class, after-school activities, weekend sport and other commitments. 

Things have slowed down a bit at my house; now my children are in their 20s, but four working adults with busy social lives still make for a pretty full schedule. Complicated by the fact we’re sharing two cars between three drivers.

Long ago, we abandoned the paper calendar hanging on the kitchen wall in favour of a shared family digital calendar. Everyone can access it on their computers, smartphones and tablets but, even then, apparently it’s still easy to miss things.

That’s where the Laser Digital Calendar comes in, letting you go old-school and hang your digital calendar on the wall, so everyone can easily see what’s on the agenda. When sitting idle, it doubles as a digital photo frame, scrolling through your favourite happy snaps.

The $229.95 15.6-inch Laser Digital Calendar’s closest competition is the $509 15-inch Skylight Calendar or perhaps the giant $1,199 27-inch Skylight Calendar Max.

If you’re looking for something with a built-in smart assistant, consider the $649 15.6-inch Amazon Echo Show 15, $149 7-inch Google Nest Hub (2nd gen) or even the discontinued 10.1-inch Google Nest Hub Max (which my parents love as their sole smart device).

Table of contents

• First impressions
• Specifications and price
• Features
• Organiser features
• Digital photo frame features
• Quality
• Who is the Laser Digital Calendar for?

Laser Digital Calendar first impressions

Out of the box, the Laser Digital Calendar looks like a pretty standard 15-inch photo frame. It doesn’t have lights, writing, or anything else on the front that would make it look out of place in your home.

Look at the back of the Digital Calendar, and you’ll find brackets for attaching the supplied arm, so the frame can stand up on a flat surface in landscape or portrait mode (it auto-rotates the interface). There are also holes for attaching it to wall screws.

You’ll also find a USB-C port for power, along with disabled USB-A and SD card ports. Plus, there are two rear speakers, designed to bounce sound off the wall.

The Laser Digital Calendar can sit on the bench or hang on the wall, in portrait or landscape mode. Image: Adam Turner.

White plastic makes for a lightweight 1.13kg design, which shouldn’t be difficult to hang, although it’s a shame you can’t opt for a front frame that looks a bit more premium. It’s not as polished-looking as its rivals, which is forgivable because it’s considerably cheaper.

Where you place the Digital Calendar is limited by the fact it relies on a 1.5 metre power cable. If you want to hang it on a wall in a central location like the dining room, you might need to think about ways to hard-wire it.

That said, calendar items and other details would be difficult to read from across the room – you really need to be within one metre to see it clearly. You can increase the font size, but it barely makes a difference – making it bolder rather than larger. 

As such, the kitchen bench or splashback might be a more practical place to install it. On the fridge would also be handy, but tricky to mount.

Determining the best place to install the Laser Digital Calendar is crucial. It’s only useful if you can convince everyone in your home to actually use it – which means it needs to be right there when they need it.

Interestingly, you can also protect it with a passcode if you don’t want to grant visitors unfettered access to your affairs.

Laser Digital Calendar specifications and price

Display size	15.6-inch
Display resolution	1920 x 1080 pixels (Full HD)
Display technology	IPS touchscreen 250 cd/m² brightness 60 fps refresh rate
Speakers	2 x 2W
Formats	JPG, JPEG, PNG images MP4, MKV, 3GP video
Connectivity	802.11 b/g/n 2.4GHz only
Power	USB DC 5 V, 3 A adaptor supplied 1.5 metre cable
Dimensions	39.2 x 24.5 x 3.5cm
Weight	1.13kg
Price	$229.95 RRP
Warranty	2 years
Official website	Laser Australia

Features

Setting up the Laser Digital Calendar requires the free Whale Framely app (iOS/Android), which also lets you manage the device remotely. The good news is that it’s free and you don’t need to sign up for yet another subscription service.

You can give the Digital Calendar a name, specify a location and then invite members of your household to access it. Thankfully, not everyone needs the Whale Framely app; you can also create on-device profiles for those too young to own a smartphone.

Next, it’s easy to link to online calendars from Google, Apple, Microsoft, Yahoo! and others. You can specify whether each calendar is one-way or two-way sync. The latter allows you to create and edit calendar appointments on the Digital Calendar’s touchscreen, which will be synced back to the cloud.

The calendar view lets you switch between Schedule, Day, Week or Month view. Schedule’s seven-day view is hard to read at a distance, but you have the advantage of swipe-to-scroll and pinch-to-zoom. Day and Week views take advantage of the screen real estate to make appointments larger, while Month gets quite crowded.

The calendar’s Week view displays plenty of information but is still easy to read from a distance. Image: Adam Turner.

By default, the Digital Calendar pops up calendar appointments and chimes loudly, as does the Whale Framely smartphone app. This might suit some homes, but thankfully you can disable it if it seems like overkill.

It’s important to note that you can’t talk to the Laser Digital Calendar and it doesn’t have a built-in smart assistant, microphone or camera, so it’s not a full substitute for a Google or Amazon smart screen. Some homes will see that as a positive.

Onboard calendar notifications will help keep some households on track. Image: Adam Turner.

Organiser features

More than just displaying your digital calendars, Laser Digital Calendar also offers a range of extra features to keep your household organised: lists, tasks, a meal planner and even rewards – if that’s what it takes to get everyone in your household motivated.

The dashboard view shows you everything at a glance, along with the time, date, weather forecast and a photo from your library. A drop-down lets you add and remove information from different household members if you want to reduce the clutter.

You can rearrange the widgets and create up to five different dashboards. Unfortunately, the size of the widgets is locked, so it’s not as customisable as a smartphone.

The dashboard view makes it easy to see everything at a glance. Image: Adam Turner.

When you create tasks and lists, you can assign them to people, which is useful. The downside is that they’re standalone apps, so you can’t sync tasks and reminders from an online calendar. 

The meal planner is interesting, making it more tempting to place the Laser Digital Calendar within arm’s reach in the kitchen. You’d probably want it on the splashback or wall, as the viewing angles aren’t great when looking down at the screen.

You’re presented with a one- or five-day meal plan view, which you can tap to create a new item or add a meal from the built-in library. Some built-in meals include the recipe, but it talks in ounces, so be warned that other measurements like cups and tablespoons are most likely American rather than Australian (it sounds crazy, but they’re not the same).

Built-in recipes could be handy in the kitchen. Image: Adam Turner.

Digital photo frame features

The Whale Framely app is required to add photos to the Laser Digital Calendar. You don’t have Skylight’s convenience of simply emailing photos, but you can add photos to someone else’s frame if you’ve added it to your Whale Framely app.

As with the Skylight ecosystem, you need to curate your photo library from scratch. You don’t have the flexibility to simply point it to an existing online photo library, as you can with Google and Amazon’s smart screens.

To help your shots look their best, you can crop photos in the app and add captions before sending them to the frame, or else adjust them after they arrive.

Within your Whale Framely photo library, you can set an album as a screensaver which kicks in between one and 10 minutes of inactivity. Of course, the downside is that you now can’t see any of your organiser details when you glance at the screen. Support for even basic voice commands, like “show me the calendar”, would be handy.

You can also manually start a slideshow by simply tapping on any photo you see on the screen. You can set the slideshow intervals anywhere from one second to 24 hours, then adjust how photos fill the screen and what’s in the background.

The limited transition options are basically three different swipes to the left. There’s no straight cross-fade, which some people prefer so they don’t constantly catch the motion out of the corner of their eye. That said, cross-fade is also lacking on the Skylight photo frame, and it stopped bothering me after a while.

Laser Digital Calendar also plays video clips and live photos, with the option to disable audio and auto-play if you don’t want the constant disruption.

Finally, you can also set a sleep schedule so the screen doesn’t waste energy overnight when no one is around to see it.

Quality

While the Laser Digital Calendar’s touchscreen is responsive, the onboard software can be a bit sluggish at times. When you switch between calendar views, it can take a while to populate.

Thankfully, the screen is bright enough to act as a decent photo frame, but the overall picture quality is a bit lacking if you have an eye for detail.

The matte display is very good at reducing glare, but the trade-off is that images aren’t as deep and vivid as what you’d get from the Skylight Calendar, or the standard Skylight dedicated digital photo frame. Likewise, it falls short of Google and Amazon smart screens.

That’s not to say it looks terrible, just that it’s not as good as its more expensive rivals. If you’re primarily after organiser features, you might not care.

On the plus side, the horizontal viewing angles – how far you can stand to the side before the picture looks overly washed out – are about on par with the standard Skylight. It looks pretty good until you get past 45 degrees. 

The Skylight Calendar’s horizontal view angles are much narrower, so it looks terrible from much of the room. This is arguably a greater sin for a digital photo frame than lacking in overall picture quality.

Who is the Laser Digital Calendar for?

If you struggle to keep your busy household organised, then the Laser Digital Calendar might be exactly what you need. The fact it’s half the price of the Skylight Calendar, with almost identical features, makes it particularly attractive (keeping in mind the Skylight Calendar looks more premium).

Like its rivals, the Laser Digital Calendar is perhaps best-suited to households where kids are old enough to read the calendar but too young to have their own smartphone and use a shared family calendar.

It comes down to whether you have a good location to install it, how you would use it and if you can convince everyone in your home to actually take advantage of it. If you can sell everyone on the benefits, it might deliver household harmony.

Laser Digital Calendar

An affordable way to keep your calendar on show, the Laser Digital Calendar might be the key to organising a busy household.

Features

9

Value for money

9.5

Performance

8.5

Ease of use

8.5

Design

8

Positives

Easy household access to calendars

Supports third-party shared calendars

Wall-mounted or free-standing

Doubles as digital photo frame

Negatives

Doesn’t look as premium as rivals

Photo frame image quality falls short of rivals

No smart assistant, mic, or camera (which might be a positive to some)

8.7

The post Laser Digital Calendar review: Save the day appeared first on GadgetGuy.

Read More

TP-Link Deco 7 powers the Wi-Fi 7 mesh upgrade you need

You know the place. The place in your house where the Wi-Fi doesn’t work properly. The back bedroom, the converted garage, or the spot at the turn of the stairs, where upon you waft daintily down, FaceTime stutters and ruins your entrance. It’s the place you’re not reading this from right now.

But ‘that place’ doesn’t just have to be a ‘feature’ of your house, and a TP-Link Deco 7 mesh system is one of the best ways to prove that.

What makes dead spots even more irritating these days is that your internet plan is almost certainly much faster than it was when you moved in. In September 2025, the NBN tiers all moved up: a great many 100Mbps plans became 500Mbps automatically, 250 became 750, and we finally got that 2Gbps tier those Californian types have always been so boastful about.

Whether any of it reaches the back bedroom is a different question, and it’s a question about your Wi-Fi rather than your internet. That’s where the TP-Link Deco 7 range comes in (to your house). And the range includes four distinct flavours, so you can easily work out which model is best for your particular architectural situation.

Getting up to speed with Wi-Fi 7 and TP-Link Deco 7

Wi-Fi 7 is the latest officially certified Wi-Fi standard. On paper, Wi-Fi 7 peaks at more than 40Gbps, roughly four times what Wi-Fi 6E managed. Of course, no home NBN connection is anywhere near that, so the number in the spec that actually matters for you is this: whether the Wi-Fi inside your house can carry the 500Mbps or 1Gbps you already pay for, all the way to the far end of the building, while everything else is running.

Not that we’re downplaying the 40Gbps max speed here. That is an impressive upgrade. But what matters right now for home users is that Wi-Fi 7 moves more data per second, gets more of it through your walls intact, and holds up the connection when a device wanders towards the edge of the network’s coverage. This should work with a lot of your older gear too, because Wi-Fi 7 is backwards compatible, though of course older kit is weird, so YMMV (your mileage may vary).

As for native Wi-Fi 7 gear, those devices are available now. Your newest phone almost certainly has Wi-Fi 7, and most new laptops do too. So, you might already have a houseful of Wi-Fi 7 devices, frustrated by a network that doesn’t know how to feed them properly.

You may also have read somewhere that Wi-Fi 8 is coming, and it is. It’s further off than the headlines suggest, though. Early hardware exists, but there’s no certified Wi-Fi 8 to buy for a whole house – from router all the way down to the gadgets, TV, washing machine, dog feeding station with buttons on it that your dog presses and the station dispenses food and sends you a photo of the dog eating it – and there won’t be for a while. Sure, you’ll be able to buy a Wi-Fi 8 router pretty soon, but Wi-Fi 7 is still the current generation, strictly speaking.

Why a TP-Link Deco 7 mesh beats a single router

Unless you love running long Ethernet cables, your router is one of the hardest-to-position bits of kit in your house. It has to go near where your NBN box or modem connects to the wall. Speaking of walls: the signal coming out of the router’s Wi-Fi transmitter hits every wall, and every wall absorbs or deflects or attenuates or does some other esoteric signal-processing thing to that signal. Which means bad speed on your wireless device.

Australian houses are notorious for blocking Wi-Fi. It could be the double brick, a slab between floors, the foil-backed sarking in the roof, or even your gigantic fish tank. By the time it reaches the back room, your 250Mbps NBN plan might feel more like 30. If you’re lucky.

A mesh system works differently. Instead of one Wi-Fi base unit (your router) trying to send and receive across the house, you put several units around the joint, and they cooperate, sharing a single network name. Your phone connects to whichever is closest, and that mesh unit hands the phone over to the next, as you move around. With the old-school extenders, your phone had to drop the weak signal and pick up the strong one. That gap is what ruined your entrance on the stairs (and made the FaceTime call stutter).

Choosing a TP-Link mesh kit gives you a couple of practical bonuses on top of that. Every TP-Link Deco 7 unit brings its own Ethernet ports, so if you’re hardcore, you can run ‘Ethernet backhaul’ and connect two mesh units physically. That’s the final beat for a persistent block on Wi-Fi signal, like a huge chunk of old steel girder in your warehouse conversion.

And of course, if you need your network to expand, you just add another matched mesh unit. It doesn’t even need to be the exact same kind; TP-Link’s Deco mesh units work with each other, no matter which part of the range they come from.

Unpacking the TP-Link Deco 7 range

Speaking of, the TP-Link range splits into four tiers, and they match.

Deco 7 is the entry point: dual-band, speeds up to 5Gbps and around 150 devices, which TP-Link describes as fast, reliable Wi-Fi 7 for everyday homes. That’s the apartment, the townhouse, the single-storey three-bedroom place where getting signal everywhere is easy.

Deco 7.

Deco 7 Pro adds the 6GHz band, making it tri-band, with speeds up to 10Gbps and around 200 devices. That extra band is what helps eliminate dead spots and dropout in a multi-storey home. If your house has stairs and a recurring argument about who’s ‘hogging the internet’, this is your tier.

Deco 7 Pro.

Deco 7 Elite sits at the top, and TP-Link calls it its most powerful Wi-Fi 7 mesh system. Speeds run to 20Gbps, device support goes past 200, and some models carry a second 6GHz band, for even more ruthless dropout-hunting. Ethernet on board is serious too, up to 10Gbps. That’s speed you can use, especially in a large home with a proper office, a NAS in the cupboard and someone who cares about latency.

Deco 7 Elite.

Deco 7 Outdoor fixes the problem none of the others can. It’s a dual-band unit built to live outside, so the patio, the shed or the granny flat joins the same network as the house. It works alongside the rest of the range, and it’s best for people with properties that need Wi-Fi up the end of the home paddock, or serious outdoor entertainers, or… actually, the list is pretty extensive.

Deco 7 Outdoor.

As mentioned, all these TP-Link devices, plus earlier mesh units too, work together. TP-Link’s advice today is to make a Deco 7 the main router. You get the latest internet-facing tech, and a Wi-Fi 7 foundation for later upgrades.

The final word

Wi-Fi 7 is finished and certified, many of the devices in your house may already be compatible with it, and Australian ISP speeds are finally humane. All that’s left is ‘fixing your Wi-Fi’, and a TP-Link Deco 7 system could be your ideal choice.

Here’s the thing. With a TP-Link Deco 7 Wi-Fi 7 system, you stop thinking about your Wi-Fi at all. Which, when it comes down to it, was always the entire point of Wi-Fi.

The post TP-Link Deco 7 powers the Wi-Fi 7 mesh upgrade you need appeared first on GadgetGuy.

Read More