Skullcandy once positioned itself as the punk rock of headphone brands, made for people keen to deviate from the mainstream. While the street culture aesthetic remains, it has a much broader appeal, with plenty of subtle headphone designs for a mass market. With the Skullcandy Crusher 1080 ANC headphones, it’s perhaps the brand’s biggest swing at the top-end market.
I say top-end, but at $399.99 in Australia, the Crusher 1080 ANC is far from the lofty price tags seen on headphones like the Sony WH-1000XM6 ($699.95) or Apple AirPods Max 2 ($999). Skullcandy isn’t going it alone, either, teaming up with Bose to use its audio technology.
According to a press release, Skullcandy is behind the headphones’ driver technology. The Crusher 1080 ANC uses a dual-driver system that creates a “sensory bass” experience. Listening to the music is one thing; Skullcandy wants you to feel the beat, too.
Image: Skullcandy.
Noise-cancellation and spatial audio are where Bose comes into the equation. Skullcandy’s headphones use Bose’s technology, combined with a six-mic system, to power its adaptive ANC. Plus, the Crusher 1080 ANC supports head-tracked spatial audio, making the music react to your motion.
According to Skullcandy, the new headphones last up to 60 hours without ANC, and up to 50 hours with ANC enabled. Aside from the battery life, there are a few noteworthy smart features. The Crusher 1080 ANC supports multipoint pairing via Bluetooth 5.3, automatic playback start and stop when you put them on or take them off, customisable five-band EQ, sidetone for calls, and reprogrammable physical buttons.
That’s a lot to include in a pair of $399 headphones. We’ll find out how Skullcandy’s latest effort stacks up soon; they’re out in Australia now via JB Hi-Fi and Skullcandy’s online store in black, candy, primer, and cement colours.
But now, with the air-conduction true-wireless open-ear headphones (as opposed to bone conduction) having a moment of popularity, suddenly Shokz once more finds itself competing against bigger brands. However, this time, the brands are much, much larger players, like Bose and Sony, not to mention brands with reputations for brilliant audio quality, like Audio-Technica and Beyerdynamic. Shokz is challenging once again, just this time it’s from the middle, with a leading track record on bone conduction audio.
Image: Alice Clarke.
That’s kind of where the Shokz OpenDots Air find themselves as well. For Shokz, they’re an entry-level product, as you can tell by the stripped-back feature set compared to the flagship OpenDots 2. However, they’re priced at the high-middle range, competing against the best JBL has to offer, and not cheap enough to be in ‘just give it a go’ territory.
I’ve had the Shokz OpenDots Air for almost two months now, and I like them a lot for what they are. I just don’t know where they fit given all the options out there.
First impressions
The first thing I noticed about the Shokz OpenDots Air is the gorgeous purple colour. It’s more like one of those pearlescent sheen colours with just a hint of purple, and it is very on trend. So sparkly. It’s also available in black, for those who prefer that colour scheme.
Image: Alice Clarke.
Pairing was as easy as you’d expect – on iPhone I paired it through Bluetooth settings and updated using the Shokz app. On Android I just held it near my phone and it paired.
Looking at the specs, the OpenDots Air seem to be somewhere in between the Shokz OpenDots One and OpenDots 2 (yes, the change in naming conventions bothers me too), with a few other cutbacks. However, all the basics are there.
Comfort
While the Shokz OpenDots 2 are the most comfortable earring-style earphones I’ve tried, these are among the least comfortable. After half an hour of wear, the shell of my ear feels fatigued. After an hour, it just straight up hurts.
Image: Alice Clarke.
Perhaps with a couple of months of daily wear, the clamp force will calm down a bit, but after two months of sporadic wear, they’re still not comfortable for me. They’re roughly on par with the MotoBuds in terms of comfort.
Image: Alice Clarke.
Audio quality
The Shokz OpenDots Air aren’t as much of a step down in terms of raw audio quality (as long as you’re not really focusing on it), compared to the OpenDots 2 as I’d feared. They lack the bass power of the flagship, and they certainly don’t have the clarity. But if you’re getting headphones to run with once a week, or just use for podcasts, or to have something on in the background, I actually don’t hate them, and I’m a fussy snob who hates a lot of things.
Image: Alice Clarke.
Listening to my usual playlist, it’s very clear that I’m missing roughly 25-35% of the soundstage. It’s much emptier than I’d expect, even on really full songs. The bass is muddy and holey, though it’s more than present enough to help give you a beat to run to. The mid tones sound fine enough, and the high tones are often audible.
They sound like what you’d expect from a mid-range open ear earring-style earphone, if not a little better, when you consider the severe limitations of the form factor.
Microphone
There is no sugarcoating it – the microphone is bad. It sounds compressed, muffled, and unclear. Using it for calls is an unpleasant experience (because the person on the other end of the call complains). It seems to be designed more for talking to an AI companion than to an actual human.
Who are the Shokz OpenDots Air for?
These are the earring-style open-air earbuds for people who have a decent budget, but don’t want to break the bank. They’re for fashion-conscious users who want to listen to podcasts while they work and still hear their colleagues.
I still maintain that users would get a better experience from an ear-hook-style pair of open-ear headphones (like the Shokz OpenFit Air), because they sound better and are more comfortable. But these do look better and more subtle than the other style, and will better suit some aesthetics. They also come in purple, which is just instantly better.
Shokz OpenDots Air
The Shokz OpenDots Air are the earring-style open-ear buds for people who have a decent budget, but don’t want to break the bank.
When you think of gadgets with eye-catching, sparkly aesthetics, robot vacuums probably don’t immediately come to mind. Perhaps it’s time to change that perception, because the Mova Z70 Ultra Roller looks quite different to other robots.
Launching in Australia today, Mova’s new flagship robot vacuum comes with a docking station in a ‘brushed metallic’ finish. There’s a more subtle ‘stone black’ variant, but it’s hard to look past the glam rock stylings of the metallic design.
But I digress; this is a robot vacuum after all, and what it does is the most important part. Mova advertises the Z70 Ultra Roller as having up to 36,000Pa of suction power, plus a roller mop that lifts out of the way to prevent getting carpets damp.
This roller mop is one of the most interesting parts about Mova’s latest robot. Over the years, robot cleaning brands have dabbled in various technologies, but roller mop technology has come into vogue recently. Compared to other technologies, rollers are said to apply more downward pressure and therefore clean up more stubborn spills. For reference, Mova claims its mop applies 18N of pressure.
Image: Mova.
Mova also reckons its mop stays cleaner for longer, too. As the robot cleans, the mop roller spins at speeds of up to 800rpm, scraping dirty water out and steadily spraying fresh water in. In other words, it should stay fresh while cleaning, avoiding tracking filthy water through the house.
When docked in the included base station, the Mova Z70 Ultra Roller goes through an automated self-cleaning cycle. Here, it empties the robot’s dustbin, washes the mop with 100°C water, and then dries it with 70°C air.
That it looks nice while doing all this is a bonus. In Australia, the Mova Z70 Ultra costs $2,999 and is sold by JB Hi-Fi, The Good Guys, Harvey Norman, and Mova’s online website.
Shrinking the screen while beefing up the grunt, the Honor 600 Pro takes the fight to the mid-sized Android heavyweights.
Spun off from Huawei a few years ago, Chinese gadget maker Honor’s Android smartphones don’t get as much attention in Australia as household names like Samsung, Google and Motorola.
Despite its lower profile, Honor is producing flagship handsets which can go toe-to-toe with its rivals, like the new Honor 600 Pro and the foldable Honor Magic V6. More affordable than some options, but certainly not budget devices, they’re certainly worth a look if you’re prepared to shop beyond the usual suspects.
At $1,499, the Honor 600 Pro has seen a major price jump since the $999 Honor 400 Pro arrived in Australia last year (the 500 Pro was never officially released here).
With a more premium look and feel than its predecessor, there’s no denying the Honor 600 Pro looks a hell of a lot like an Apple iPhone. Paying homage to Cupertino is a common design strategy among lesser-known Android smartphone makers like Oppo (such as this year’s Oppo Reno 15 Pro), Xiaomi and Realme.
The Honor Pro 600’s unibody aluminium matte frame with sharp edges, sandwiched between a glass front and composite fibreglass-like back, could easily be mistaken for an iGadget. One giveaway, as with most Android handsets, is that all the buttons are on the right-hand side, whereas iPhones place the volume and Action (mute) button on the left.
There’s also a programmable Apple-esque touch-sensitive Quick Button on the right, which can be used to easily launch the camera or access AI features.
While some Pro smartphone screens creep up towards the 7-inch mark, the Honor 600 Pro keeps it at a more manageable 6.57 inches, meaning it shouldn’t be too unwieldy for most hands. It’s a slight step down from the 6.7-inch Honor 400 Pro.
At the same time, Honor has managed to reduce the bezel to a mere .98 mm, making it a fraction thinner than what you’d find on an iPhone, but not enough to get excited about.
As always, I’m disappointed the fingerprint reader isn’t built into the power button. Instead, you need to reach down a long way with your thumb to access the onscreen reader, which I think increases the risk of the phone toppling out of your hand.
Fire up the Honor 600 Pro, and you’re faced with a super-bright and vivid 2728 x 1264 pixel AMOLED display. Even with 6.57 inches of screen real estate, you still enjoy a sharp 458 pixels per inch.
The screen offers 10-bit colour with a 100% DCI-P3 colour gamut, along with up to 120 Hz refresh rate for smooth scrolling. What really stands out from the crowd is an amazing 8,000 nits peak brightness, although it’s not for the entire screen. It can only push this extreme brightness to small, specific areas like HDR highlights or fine details,
You won’t see the full benefit of this in day-to-day use, although you can enable ‘sunlight mode’ to ensure the screen is brighter outdoors. You’ll only unlock full brightness when watching High Dynamic Range content from the likes of Netflix and Amazon – supporting HDR10+ but not Dolby Vision.
At the bottom of the handset, you’ve got a USB-C port, alongside a nano-SIM port with the benefit of eSIM, but no microSD card support. The phone features dual speakers for stereo (relying on a dedicated top speaker, rather than an earpiece speaker) but there’s no Dolby Atmos support, and you miss out on an old-school headphone jack.
The Honor 600 Pro runs Android 16, customised with Honor’s own MagicOS 10, which unsurprisingly feels a lot like Apple’s iOS. You have to deal with a reasonably restrained amount of preloaded social media bloatware, plus links to popular apps like Spotify, WhatsApp and Netflix, so you can install them without searching the Google Play app store.
Honor says the handset will only receive two major Android OS updates and three years of security patches in Australia. That’s outrageous considering that Europe gets six years of coverage for the exact same device. Honor says it is “continuing to evaluate based on market and consumer needs” – which is corporate speak for “Australians are second-class citizens and we’ll see how many people complain before we even think about changing it.”
MagicOS 10 comes with the mandatory dollop of AI, including AI Deepfake Detection, real-time AI Translation, AI Text Extraction, AI Memories and AI Writing assistants. There is also an AI-powered photo editor, plus the ability to turn photos into videos.
Of course, if AI features are important to you, make sure you consider the Google Pixel 10 Pro.
As you’d expect with the Pro name, one of the Honor 600 Pro’s big selling points is a triple-lens rear camera array. Flip the handset over, and you’ll find a 200 MP s primary shooter with the benefit of optical image stabilisation. It’s blessed with a large 1/1.4 inch sensor to improve low-light performance.
The handset boasts a CIPA 6.5 rating (from the Camera and Imaging Products Association), meaning it can shoot at a shutter speed 6.5 steps slower than normal without motion blur to improve handheld and low-light photography.
The Honor 600 Pro triple rear camera array features a periscope telephoto lens. Image: Adam Turner.
At this price range, a 3.5x telephoto lens is better than you’d expect, and arguably more useful than a macro lens. The trade-off is that the ultrawide lens is only 12 MP, where you’d really expect it to be 50 MP.
While the island around the rear camera array extends across the width of the phone, it’s still not enough to completely eliminate wobble when sitting on a flat surface.
Around the front, you’ve got a 50 MP ultrawide selfie camera, surprisingly lacking autofocus. It opts for a punch-hole design rather than relying on an Apple-esque notch, but MagicOS still replicates Apple’s Dynamic Island with Magic Capsule.
Under the bonnet, the Honor 600 Pro packs a beefy octa-core Snapdragon 8 Elite Mobile Platform with an Adreno 830 GPU. They’re accompanied by a generous 512 GB of storage and 12 GB of RAM. The 8 Elite is no longer the latest and greatest, but it still packs quite a punch.
When it comes to connectivity, it’s a sub-6 5G handset with the benefit of dual nano-SIM and eSIM. You can take advantage of Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 6, with an impressive spread of audio codecs, including aptX Lossless and the lesser-known LHDC5.0.
The phone packs a very generous 7000 mAh battery, which should get you through a very long day and well into the next. When it’s time for a top-up, the phone can take advantage of 80-watt wired and 50-watt wireless charging, although keep in mind there’s no AC charger in the box.
When it comes to ruggedness, you’ve got IP68, IP69 and IP69K certification – the latter of which is the highest ingress protection rating, meaning it is completely dust-tight and can survive close-range, high-pressure and high-temperature water jets. The body has an SGS 5-star certification for drop and crush resistance, but I’d feel better if Honor also cited the nature of the glass.
Compared to the more affordable $999 Honor 600, the $1,499 600 Pro upgrades to the Snapdragon 8 Elite chipset, while adding the 50MP telephoto lens with 3.5x optical zoom and 50W wireless charging.
Quality
Geekbench 6 results tell an excellent story thanks to that Snapdragon silicon, scoring 3,053 single-core, 9,039 multi-core and 17,990 OpenCL. That sees it outgun most handsets around this price point, like the Oppo Reno 15 Pro and Google Pixel 10 Pro. It still falls short of the more expensive Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra and Oppo Find X9 Pro, not to mention the more affordable standard-issue Apple iPhone 17, which has inherited more ‘pro’ features.
When it comes to photography, 200 MP primary shooters always sound impressive, but we all know by now that pixels aren’t everything. Thankfully, it does an impressive job, delivering sharp and vivid images that don’t look too overblown or overprocessed. Thanks to that large sensor and great stabilisation, it does a particularly good job with tricky lighting conditions and low-light environments.
1x zoom on the 200 MP main shooter produces impressive results in complex lighting. Image: Adam Turner.
The 120x super zoom also does an impressive job; unfortunately, the For Sale sign across the creek from my house is gone, but it still does well with challenging scenes that don’t just include straight lines (making it harder for AI to make an educated guess). Overall, it’s not as impressive as the 100x super zoom on the Honor Magic V6 that I’m testing at the same time (review to come).
A semi-open doorway roughly 150 metres away looks quite detailed with 120x zoom. Image: Adam Turner.
You do see a quality drop when switching across to the 12 MP ultrawide lens, although it’s not as big a drop as you might expect.
Honor spruiks the 600 Pro’s low-light capabilities, and it did a very good job of my standard low-light test in the junk in cupboard under my stairs. But like most phones, it struggles to get the balance right outside.
The photo below was taken at 10:30 PM mid-winter. The clear sky should be black and at least one star should be visible, but the photo is working too hard to brighten the scene (while leaving the shadows very murky). The Samsung Galaxy S26 Ultra did a better job, but not as good as the iPhone 17.
The sky should be black. Image: Adam Turner.
When it comes to selfies, you don’t have the option of 2x optical zoom as with some rivals, but I respect the default ‘warts ‘n all’ results, resisting the temptation to go all-in on AI-assisted retouching.
The selfie camera bucks the trend of ironing out wrinkles. Image: Adam Turner.
Who is the Honor 600 Pro for?
The Honor 600 Pro has a lot to offer if you’re looking for a great camera array including a telephoto lens. All in a relatively compact handset with a decent battery life and heaps of grunt.
That said, there’s some tough competition in the pro space. Its nearest competitor would be the similarly priced iPhone-esque Oppo Reno 15 Pro, which doesn’t pack as much screen real estate or grunt but offers a slightly better camera array (such as 50 MP ultrawide, selfie auto-focus) and throws in a fast AC charger for good measure.
Honor 600 Pro
Tons of grunt and a great telephoto lens see the Honor 600 Pro stand tall among better-known Android mid-size heavyweights, even if its pathetic local software support is well below competing brands.
I’ve tested a lot of foldable phones in recent years. Some of the early devices left a bit to be desired, but the form factor has since improved drastically. One of the latest foldables that gets things right is the Motorola Razr Fold.
As mentioned in our review of the Razr Fold, it’s an extremely well-rounded phone that makes the most of the folding design. Durable and sturdy, it’s nice to hold and look at its big screen.
Early on, foldable phones didn’t have the best cameras going around, but that’s changed. Now, you get great cameras, with phones like the Razr Fold ranking highly on DXOMARK’s photography benchmark tests.
It’s a similar story with battery life. Foldable phones have less space in which to fit large batteries, so they didn’t last as long as classic slab phones. But now you can get foldables with 6,000mAh batteries and bigger, which is pretty impressive.
Apple’s first public beta of iOS 27 is now available, bringing with it an early glimpse at the new Siri AI assistant on iPhones.
Apple made a developer beta of the major operating system update available shortly after WWDC last month, but the company now has a build that’s closer to public consumption. The iOS 27 public beta — along with updates for the rest of Apple’s ecosystem, including iPads and Macs — focuses a lot on performance improvements and customisation.
Like the generative AI-based platforms offered by the likes of Google and Samsung, Siri AI is meant to be more capable at handling complex, multi-step queries. It’s also meant to answer specific questions based on your phone’s contents, like messages and emails.
Siri AI is only available to recent iPhone owners, however. Falling under the ‘Apple Intelligence’ banner, the feature requires an iPhone 15 Pro, iPhone 16e or newer to work. Fortunately, the overall device improvements promised with iOS 27 are available for anyone with an iPhone 11, iPhone SE (2020), and anything more recent.
If you’re keen to try the iOS 27 beta, back up your device first, and then follow the instructions on Apple’s website. Otherwise, the full release will likely arrive in September, when Apple traditionally launches its latest iPhones.
Previewing Siri AI via the iOS 27 beta
I’ve tried Siri AI for a few weeks via the iOS 27 developer beta, and it’s an improvement from the original Siri. Apple’s digital assistant understands my Aussie accent better, plus it was able to find a specific email from my mum without me needing to open the app.
It still has some awkward moments, though. When I tried to ask Siri what the weather was for the next game of footy at Adelaide Oval, it got the date and the teams correct, but couldn’t source Saturday’s weather, despite it being available. Next time I asked, Siri said it could fetch the weather, but didn’t know who was playing or when.
Third time’s the charm, though, as another attempt proved successful. Siri correctly identified Saturday’s game as being between Port Adelaide and Fremantle, along with the latest weather forecast. It was a relatively low-stakes example and showed that there’s still a bit to iron out, but even with some hiccups, Siri AI was better at collecting information from multiple sources than the older version.
My experience was similar to that of tech reporter and creator Joanna Stern’s, where she noticed a processing delay between queries. Each time I asked a question, Siri had to think for a few seconds before responding. Whether this is because of the beta status or a result of most processing taking place on-device, I’m not sure. I’ll have to wait a couple of months to know for sure.
Best of all? Apple’s AI stuff is largely opt-in and easily ignored if you don’t want to use it.
Over the years, Microsoft’s ubiquitous operating system has accumulated a lot of clutter. Anytime you bring up a search on Windows, you’re faced with countless promotions, web search recommendations, and other information that gets in the way. It’s a frustrating experience, one that might improve based on some testing currently underway.
A tweaked Windows Search Box is coming to Windows Insiders via the Experimental Channel, stripping away much of the clutter. Rather than showing results from external sources, it focuses on displaying content local to your machine.
Image: Microsoft.
“You’ve been asking for search that is faster, more relevant, and easier to use—whether you’re opening an app, finding a file, or changing a setting,” read a Windows blog post attributed to Jeff Petty and Anderson Aiziro.
In a series of before-and-after images, the revamped search box shows a list of previous searches instead of seemingly random web results. Microsoft says the new user experience removes promotional content from searches, while prioritising local files and apps.
Image: Microsoft.
Within the Privacy & Settings > Search menu, users can also disable web searches and Microsoft Store listings from appearing in search box queries entirely. As a result, on-device searches should be cleaner and easier to parse.
Given the gradual nature of the rollout, not all Windows Insiders will have access to the new search box experience immediately. Microsoft hasn’t specified when or if the update will come to more users later.
Image: Microsoft.
Based on the early look at Windows’ changes to search, it looks similar to what Apple tries to achieve with its on-device Spotlight search. Compared to Windows’ existing search experience, Spotlight is far less cluttered, focusing mainly on local files as opposed to web results.
Less clutter is always nice, so fingers crossed that Windows brings the update to more people soon.
