The Orico iMatch IV300 is a 1 terabyte external USB-C NVMe solid state hard drive (SSD) for USB-C 3.1 Gen 2 (10Gbps) or earlier devices. Is it fast? Try over 1Gigabyte per second.
We have written about ORICO before. Its GV1000 NVMe SSD 4.1/5 also blitzed our speed tests. The new ORICO IV300 packs twice the capacity into a smaller unit.
Speaking of speed – as you will see below, it is excellent with larger files. ORICO has also solved the issue of occasional hangs with Thunderbolt that was due to an earlier controller on the GV1000.
Size/Price: 500GB ($139.99) and 1TB ($219.99) free delivery
Warranty: 3-year warranty via Amazon
Country of manufacture: China
ORICO is a well-known and respected Chinese manufacturer of peripherals and digital accessories. It has a focus on storage, USB adapters and chargers
Base specs
Model: ORICO iMatch IV300
Case: Aluminum alloy
Dimension: 68.8 (L) x 32 (W) x 10.4 ( H) mm
Weight: 38g plus 11g cable
Colours: Black, Silver, China Blue, China Red
Control chip: JMS583 A2 revision bridge chip (10Gbps)
Interface: UASP NVMe USB-C 3.1 Gen2 (10Gbps)
Supports TRIM
Storage: 3D NAND FLASH, M.2 NVMe SSD
Capacity: 250GB / 500GB / 1TB
Supported: Windows, Mac OS, Linux, Android
In the box: Drive, USB-C to USB-C Cable and USB-A to USB-A cable
Supports a small lanyard
Who will use it?
I will for starters – 1TB in a minuscule 38g size. But as it breaks the 1Gbps barrier, it is fast enough for 4K videographers, photographers, drone operators and more to attach to their camera or drone and give them an extra TB of storage. Our use it for rendering, although that is best with internal SSDs that can reach 3000Mbps.
This is fast but the host device needs USB-C 3.1 or 3.2 and Gen 2 to achieve it
We were impressed that it has good large file speeds. A separate 10GB file transfer to (write), and read back from; it achieved a solid 350MBps write and 800MBps read. This puts it ahead of the Samsung T7 and SanDisk Extreme Pro. We ran a ‘silly’ write test to see when the buffer would overflow and found that a file size around 50GB slowed it down. We discovered that Orico builds in a safety thermal throttle at about 50GB or 50°.
This is still fast – on a USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 device.
GadgetGuys take – Orico iMatch IV300 is impressive
As it is USB-C 3.1 Gen 2, it may not work on some older ARM devices, and iPhone is OUT – test it first. It does work on Samsung Galaxy S10 or later. Fear not, it is backwards compatible and will achieve Gen 1 (5Gbps) – about half speed as above.
Orico iMatch IV300 portable hard drive is a little ripper
I hesitate with this review of the Vevor Ultrasonic Vinyl Record Cleaner. The reviews of products for cleaning vinyl records are almost all useless. So many of them are concerned about how clean the records look. But what they look like doesn’t really matter. Sure, a record that looks filthy will typically sound awful. But a record that looks clean? It may sound as good as new, or it also may sound awful. What matters is the sound.
Which brings me to the Vevor Ultrasonic Vinyl Record Cleaner. I spotted it online, priced at $369.99. I was so, so tempted. And then Black Friday rolled around, and it appeared before my eyes for just $299.99. My self-discipline crumbled, and I reached for my debit card …
Why would I consider an ultrasonic cleaner? Why was three hundred bucks good value? What does it actually do? Does it work?
Some short answers: ultrasonic cleaners can certainly work and three hundred dollars is amazing value. Read on for more answers.
About: I know nothing about Vevor. I assume that it’s Chinese. I was seduced by the low price and took a chance. The unit turned up and worked. That’s good enough for me.
What is ultrasonic cleaning
It sounds like a strange way of going about things, but ultrasonic cleaning has long been used for cleaning things where dirt gets into nooks and crannies, making it difficult to remove. Basically, the object to be cleaned is immersed in a bath of water – often with an additive that breaks the surface tension of the water, helping it get all the way in. Then a powerful ultrasonic signal is blasted into the water for some minutes.
This leads to “cavitation” of the water near any surfaces. That is, tiny bubbles of gas are formed. As they form and then collapse, they loosen the dirt on the surface. If you take your jewellery to a jeweller for a clean, there’s a good chance that the pieces will end up in an ultrasonic cleaner.
Why the Vevor Ultrasonic Vinyl Record Cleaner?
Well, price really. Ultrasonic cleaners designed for vinyl records have been around for quite a while as an alternative to the more traditional record cleaning machines. Those traditional machines typically involve brushes and vacuums to suck fluid and dirt from the record surface.
I’ve reviewed a record cleaning machine and it works. And I’ve reviewed an ultrasonic record cleaner, and it also worked. That ultrasonic record cleaner was a real bargain amongst the breed, costing just $1,999.
you see why my eyes lit up when I saw one for $299.99? But would it be any good? Only one way to find out. I paid my money, and a few days later the unit turned up in a nondescript cardboard box.
Of course, it wasn’t identical to that other cleaner. The attachments for the records were clearly different, and the Vevor uses 180 watts at 40kHz rather than 200 watts at 35kHz. But conceptually it was the same.
About the Vevor Ultrasonic Vinyl Record Cleaner
Vevor sells a bunch of ultrasonic cleaners of various sizes for various purposes. The Vevor Ultrasonic Vinyl Record Cleaner consists of two parts. The cleaner itself is a six-litre tank of stainless steel construction, and with a metal lid. There are controls on the front for the timer – how long the ultrasound will be applied – and for the water heater. The $2K cleaner didn’t have a heater, and I wouldn’t recommend using it, lest your vinyl warp or be otherwise damaged. But it’s useful nonetheless because since the heater has a thermostat, it has a thermometer. And this displays the water temperature when the heater is not in use. Since the ultrasound can raise the water temperature, you can easily monitor it.
The other part is an attachment which holds and rotates the records. I was pretty shocked by its construction. It seems to be made with slabs of machined aluminium, as though it belongs with the $2K machine, not a $300 machine. This has a spindle with a locking screw on the end and a number of plastic spacer discs. These are slightly larger than the size of a record label. You can put up to six LPs on the spindle, each pair with an intervening spacer. This whole contraption clips neatly onto the edge of the tank. A separate wall wart provides power for the motor. The tank timer does not interact with the motor on this, so you just switch it on and off manually.
The cleaning procedure
The tank has a proper power cable with an Australian fitting on the end – China and Australia share the same three pin plug. But the wall wart for the motor had a US-style two pin plug. I cheated as we did in the old days: I turned them using a pair of pliers so that they fit in an Australian power point, but it might be safer to spend ten dollars on a plug adaptor. They work with our 230 volts.
To clean, you fill the tank with distilled water – I picked it up for a dollar a litre at Big W – and add a little something to help break surface tension. I used around 50ml of 64% isopropyl alcohol. Then you load up the records, tighten them into place, hook the holder/motor over the edge of the tank and turn on the motor. The tank timer defaults to 5 minutes. I just tapped the up button for a while to the fifteen minutes I decided on and pressed the start button.
You can’t hear 40kHz of course, but the unit does produce an irritating buzzy noise, so you may want to go to a different room until it’s finished.
At the end of that you can shake them off and dry with a microfibre cloth. Then it’s best to air them for a while so any remaining moisture can evaporate. A record rack is included to facilitate that.
It’s all really quite simple. But I should note that the space/label protector disks provided with the unit are too large for either 45rpm singles or 10-inch 78s. I’m planning on fabricating some of my own for those records.
Did it work?
If we’re talking about improving the sound, well, as with all record cleaners, the answer is “yes and no”. It can do nothing for damage to the grooves, but it certainly cleaned out dirt. If your records are already clean, there’ll probably be no change at all.
I’m only going to demonstrate one record, which shows a pretty extreme improvement. It’s a very old LP, so old it’s only ten inches. Apparently, it was released in 1954. It came with those 78s I wrote about a while back. It’s Two in Love by Nat “King” Cole.
As I said, I don’t care too much about what the record looks like. So let’s see what it sounded like. I recorded the whole thing to a computer using the Audio-Technica AT-LP120XBT-USB turntable, cleaned it with the Vevor Ultrasonic Vinyl Record Cleaner then recorded it again. Here’s what the first recording looked like:
And afterwards:
Quite the difference, huh?
Let’s zoom in on the middle of side 2. Here’s an 11.44 second segment from before the clean:
And from after:
But let’s not rely solely on pictures. Here’s what the pre-clean segment sounds like:
And after cleaning:
Not perfect for sure, but enormously improved. I would have expected there to be lots of scratches, since this is how the record looked after cleaning, with lots of scuff marks:
I guess two thirds of a century of indifferent care will do that to a record.
A digression – what does dirt look like? Digitally, I mean.
Warning. This is super nerd stuff. It’s the kind of thing that fascinates me, but casual readers will find utterly boring.
One of the records I cleaned was Point of Know Return by the progressive rock group Kansas. I’d picked this up for around $10 second-hand from a real record shop and it was quite listenable as it was, although there were clearly a multitude of low-level clicks. Why not give it a bath? As with the Nat “King” Cole, I did this one in the distilled water plus a touch of alcohol bath, once only, no physical scrubbing. I guess you’d say this one is a pretty positive test of whether ultrasonic cleaning works.
So, let’s look at the full-track waveform of “Lightning’s Hand”, the first track on side 2 before we cleaned it:
It looks pretty clean. Looking at the left (top) channel only, there seem to be only three clicks that poke above the main level of the audio. So, how about post clean? Well, here it is:
Well, all three of those large clicks have gone … but what’s that spike poking up in the left (upper) channel at the middle of the screen. It doesn’t match any of the clicks in the original. Had the Vevor Ultrasonic Vinyl Record Cleaner somehow added a click?
Let’s zoom in
Here’s one of the clicks in the uncleaned version:
That is quite typical of foreign matter in the groove. If you look at the waveform leading up to it and beyond it, you’ll see the left and right channels roughly match each other. Not perfectly – we’re talking about stereo music, after all. And then in the middle of that is this massive spike which is roughly opposite in the left and right channels. That, dear reader, is something in the groove.
Now, when I played that track after I’d cleaned it – repeatedly over the section with that spike of apparent dirt, apparently deposited by the purported record cleaner – I heard … nothing. There was not tick or clunk or anything. What was going on. Let’s zoom in what looks like a click on the cleaned record:
Well, that looks kind of different. That spike looks like it’s part of the signal. It’s a flattened on the top – that’s due to the analogue to digital converter in the Audio-Technica turntable clipping with some high level signals, as previously reported. There is a noise tick there as well, but it’s quite low in level and immediately after that spike.
Why didn’t that real-signal spike appear in the pre-cleaned recording? Fluke, I guess. It was just how the samples lined up differently on the two plays.
Gadgetguy’s Take – the Vevor Ultrasonic Vinyl Record Cleaner is an excellent way to clean records at a very low cost
Do remember that some records just aren’t recoverable. But if it’s just dirt, it looks like the Vevor Ultrasonic Vinyl Record Cleaner is up to the job.
Display screens are all well and good, but I maintain that the best way to view photos is on paper. That’s where the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 professional photographic printer comes in. You can use it to produce beautiful printed images – professional quality ones – from your digital photos.
It allows big prints: A3+, which is 32.9 by 48.3 centimetres. With manual feeding, you can use paper up to one metre long. Also provided is a small plastic tray, with room for media up to 120mm by 120mm. One main purpose for this is to feed printable CDs and DVDs.
The printer uses ten Lucia Pro pigment-based ink cartridges for truly high-quality results. The maximum print resolution is 4,800 dpi horizontally, 2,400 dpi vertically.
Of course, it’s a large printer, but with the input and output tray/guides folded in, it doesn’t use a ridiculous amount of space. The body of the printer is 639mm wide, 379mm deep and 200mm tall. The paper guide folds out at the top rear, while the output tray folds out at the front. The 75mm colour LCD display (it’s not a touch panel) is clear and gives good feedback on what you’re doing. A cluster of buttons provide that control, and for various activities, such as inserting paper, the display can give you instructions.
Connections are via USB directly to a computer, or by network connection with both Ethernet and Wi-Fi supported. I used Ethernet.
Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 professional photographic printer
About: Canon, Inc is a Japanese company founded in the 1930s to make cameras. These days it still makes cameras, plus a whole lot more. It has in the inkjet game pretty much since the beginning of that technology. Back then Canon’s trade name for it was called “Bubble Jet”.
Setting up the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300
The printer had been doing the rounds so I didn’t get the whole setup-from-scratch experience. Indeed, the box was clearly marked that it had to be kept flat, since all the ink cartridges had been installed. But as is usually the case with these things, it is just a matter of placing the printer in a suitable place and pulling off all the bits of tape and orange-coloured chocks and locks that keep things from sliding around inside.
And then loading in the ten ink cartridges. Naturally the printer, and the driver installed on your computer, provides warning when one of the ink cartridges is running low. As supplied, the various ink cartridges were at all kinds of levels with a couple of them ready for replacement. Canon included two full sets of new cartridges for the review.
Installing them as needed was easy, once I re-accustomed myself to the fact that inkjet printers have their own personal needs. They frequently go and do seemingly inexplicable things. The purpose of them is often obscure, but presumably helpful for proper operation. In the case of changing the ink cartridges, you just open the cover and press the red button. Then nothing happens. For a while. Then the carriage holding the ink cartridges teases you by coming partway out into the open two or three times, before retreating again. But, finally, it comes all the way out. The cartridges slip out easy and snap into place with no fuss. Close the lid and then the printer is busy for a few minutes as it “agitates the ink”.
Consumables
The ten inks are two varieties of cyan, two of magenta, one yellow, one red, one grey, matte black and photo black, and something called “Chroma Optimizer”. They are rated to yield between 33 and 270 A3+ pages, with most of them rated at around 80 pages. They cost about $26 each – that’s $260 for a full replacement set, but because of the uneven use, buying them individually is usually the better way to go.
Of course, Canon sells its own paper. It provided three packs of extremely high quality paper in A3 size: Pro Luster, Pro Platinum and Photo Paper Plus Semi-Gloss. These come in packs of 20. Expect to pay something around $50 per pack. That works out to around $2.50 per sheet.
My naïve calculations suggest that you’d be using around 97 cents of ink per A3+ page. Putting it together, expect to pay around $3.50 per A3/A3+ print.
Can you economise on consumables? I would strongly oppose it for the ink cartridges. Who knows what havoc may be wreaked by the wrong ink, and the reason for buying a printer like the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 in the first place is to get quality.
Paper? The printer has plenty of generic printer paper settings, so it may be worth experimenting. It also has some special presets for fine art papers. It can handle paper weights up to 380gsm, or a thickness of up on 0.6mm. All that said, there are specific presets for Canon paper. No doubt the printer has been optimised for those.
Printing on the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300
I did a couple of test prints on standard A4 plain paper, just to make sure it worked. Yes, you can use the printer to produce memos if you wish. Just in case.
But the rest of the time I spent using up some of that lovely Canon photo paper. I did most of my printing using Photoshop on my desktop, but I also tried out the Canon Print/Selphy app for a couple of pictures on my phone. Let’s deal with that one quickly, first.
I was disappointed with the first one. The image was smeared (not the ink, the image itself) and soft and not at all good. Then I realised that I’d picked the wrong image in the app. It does not have a good preview of the images, just tiny thumbnails which you select for printing. So use your regular photo viewer first to make sure you know what you want to print. When I selected the correct photo, it came out looking rather fine. I’d taken a comparison shot with a decent camera and printed it out as well, and the differences weren’t as marked as I had expected.
The app did have one quirk. In the print settings you can tick a box, telling it to use the settings already defined in the printer (you know, paper type and such). But the app reported that it could not work in this way, so I had to enter the settings myself.
And with Photoshop
Every time I review a fancy printer like this, I first spend a bit of time working out what size to make the picture in Photoshop. Your photos have an inherent size based on the pixel resolution. And they also carry and embedded dots-per-inch value in the file. That dpi setting is placed there by the camera and different brands place different values. For example, checking out a bunch of photos on my computer, I find that Sony cameras put in 350dpi, Nikon 300dpi or 240dpi, Fujifilm 72dpi, Canon 72dpi, my Huawei P30 Pro phone uses 96dpi, Panasonic 180dpi.
That value can be changed easily in Photoshop. You just go to image size, click on the “Resample” box so that it’s unticked, and type in the new value. The Width and Height figures will change to match if you have the units set to something other than pixels. There is absolutely no change in any way to the picture. You’re just poking a different dpi value into the file when you save it.
The reason that’s required is because Photoshop is pretty dumb. If you tell it to print a portrait of, say, 4,000 by 6,000 pixels and it has a 72dpi resolution set, you’ll just get a print of the person’s nose filling the print sheet.
I found the best way was, after cropping the image if required, to go into Image Size, set the units to centimetres (with resample off) and set the width or height to be slightly bigger than the sheet – that’s for the borderless printing. The final print resolution was typically around 350dpi. Since the printer has five to ten times that resolution available, it was able to easily handle such a low input resolution.
The print results …
… were simply gorgeous. A couple of family pictures were colourful and clean. I tried looking at the picture from odd angles so as to pick up reflections. Sometimes different inks give a different shininess. No such problems.
Those kinds of pictures are the bread and butter of any photo printer and, thus, relatively easy. So I tried a couple of night shots I’d taken during the smoke haze afflicting us on New Year’s Eve a year ago. Lots of deep, dark blacks, with smaller brightly lit areas. The blocks of deep black were perfectly smooth. Not once in all the prints that I made were there any semi-microscopic lines due to head or paper-advance inaccuracies.
Now those photos would have drawn on all nine of the colours available, plus the Chroma Optimizer. (Apparently Chroma Optimizer is an additional layer that evens up the level of gloss and enhances the underlying colours.) But a real challenge is producing high quality monochrome prints. I took a photo and carefully converted it to black and white, then printed in on full A3 paper. Presumably this could only use the black and grey inks. What I was looking for was the smoothness of gradients – any banding – and whether there was any visible dithering. The gradients were superbly smooth, without the slightest hint of banding. Beautiful. And dithering, if being used, was too small to be visible, even under a magnifying glass, even in the parts of the image that were almost perfectly white. The black sections of the print were deep indeed.
The pigment-based ink was quite impervious to splashes of water.
Speed?
Canon says that the printer takes around 255 seconds for a full A3+ colour print. Sounds about right. I did all my printing at the highest picture settings and they typically took about five minutes to come out. Often that included a few tens of seconds before much of anything productive happened as the printer did some under-the-hood preparations.
Seem a bit slow to you? Not to me. I’d rather it take plenty of time if that’s what’s required to ensure perfect results. Which is what it seemed to be doing.
Gadgetguy’s Take – the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 professional photographic printer is a superb photo printer, producing magnificent results.
One final note: the first near-letter-quality printer I bought was I think the first model of HP Inkjet. It was 300dpi, black ink only – which ran if it encountered any water. The printer jammed with every second sheet of paper. And it cost about the same in nominal terms as the Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 professional photographic printer, which is to say about twice as much in real terms. Don’t we live in great times?
Canon imagePROGRAF PRO-300 professional photographic printer
Telstra wants you to consider its smartphone trade-in program partnering with Kingfisher Mobile to trade in ‘eligible’ and out-of-contract devices.
The only issues with its smartphone trade-in program are the term ‘eligible’ and what prices to expect. Telstra does not publish that information – you must go to the ‘My Telstra’ app to find if you have ‘selected’ Apple, Samsung and Google phones or Apple and Samsung tablets.
Eligible devices are in full working order without scratches, screen or battery issues. They are inspected, repackaged, resold, or recycled rather than ending up as e-waste. The trade-in is a credit against a new phone – not cashback.
It is Telstra’s attempt to keep its clients in the tent. But remember all the Telcos offer incentives to stay with them.
There are lots of smartphone trade-in programs
Samsung, Apple and Google will trade their late-model premium smartphones as a credit against a new one. Sometimes these offer the best prices to lock you into the brand.
Many third-parties offer cash back instead of a credit against a new phone on a plan. They need to make a profit so prices are not generally as high.
Companies include Mobile Monster, Sell Your Mobile, Mazuma Mobile, Mobile Trade, Cashaphone, and many more. Just search for ‘phone trade-in Australia’.
It is a matter of whether you want a lock-in to a Telco, or have the freedom of no lock-in.
Smartphone trade-in only works for premium devices
First, remember that about 85% of phones in Australia are outright purchase and cost below $699. We have listed the best of these here (as at the end of 2020).
These generally end up with Mobile Virtual Network Operators like Boost, Woolworths, Coles or Aldi on low monthly voice/data costs and no lock-in contacts. They depreciate at about 4-5% a month, so after 2-years they are worth little. Neither do they have any trade-in value despite having a few more years life in them.
Telstra et al., have no interest in this market, instead looking for 2-3-year-old Samsung S series, Apple iPhone and Google Pixel 4 or later. For example, an iPhone XS Max in the best condition resells for $800-900 and trade-in is $250-300. A Samsung Galaxy S10+ resells for under $700, and trade-in is about $200-250.
Only premium phones have an adequate profit margin for the refurbisher. Have a look at Green-Gadgets Australia that list hundreds of second-hand smartphones and to get an indicative price. Trade-in value is about 20-30% of that.
We have a great article on refurbs here and an exclusive look inside Alegre’s Aussie refurb facility here.
Best uses for a 2–3-year-old phone
Sell it via Gumtree. Listing prices tend to be 25/50/75% of RRP for a three/two/one-year-old device. We caution you that there can be issues and scams to be aware of, but overall, it will give you the best return
Give it to your spouse, children and upgrade their technology. A four-year-old smartphone is worth nothing, and the battery will likely be dead.
Mobile Muster will recycle older phones for free, and it is very easy to drop a phone in at a participating store. On that note, clean out your draws and get rid of the old Nokias, Razrs and feature phones you forgot you had.
What 2020 IT tech excited me? The answer – not a lot because 2020 was more of an evolutionary year tempered by COVID-19 leading to severe parts and labour shortages.
What 2020 IT tech excited me is a companion article to What 2020 Home Tech excited me? covering ten of the best – TVs, Soundbars, Bluetooth headphones, Bluetooth speakers, Smartphones, Kitchen appliances, air purifiers, robovacs, smart toothbrushes and Infrared thermometers.
This is more about the tech that supports a home. And it is harder to select the best from our reviews because of different use cases and in many cases, review units were not available.
A router is the backbone of the home Wi-Fi network. The majority of blackspot issues occur from a) poor placement or b) an underpowered router. But we have learnt that you don’t necessarily need the biggest and fastest Wi-Fi 6 AX router. You need to balance the number of devices, router capacity, and NBN speed.
Wi-Fi AX was top of the tree: ASUS ROG Rapture GT-AX11000 is a brute of a router – and I love it. It has AX11000 bandwidth, 12 streams and supports the most devices. It is $769, but I have seen it for $659. Why buy? Nothing more powerful and it supports MESH satellites as well.
When a toothbrush or scales has Bluetooth and cloud intelligence, then you know IoT has arrived. We wrote a smart home guide in 2019 and its very relevant and a great overview of what you can do. But the emphasis now is ‘Does the device work with Google Assistant?’
During the year, we used Google Assistant speakers, remote 240V plugs, lighting systems, security cameras, smart locks and more, but there were no quantum leaps in smart home tech.
We filed these reviews and articles under Smart Home.
#3 LED lights save heaps
We wrote a Dummies guide to LED lights which has become a training resource for many major retailers. It introduces the LED replacement options for all older halogen, Para flood, incandescent and Fluro lights.
The proof. We converted 38 halogen lights to LED and are saving 90% on our lighting power bill.
Special mention to Laser Co for providing an array of LED products so we could test the replacement issues.
#4 Security camera
This was the year we were inundated by offers, nay pleas, to review cheap Chinese security cameras from EUFY, EZVIZ and many more. The problem with these all was that their privacy terms did not pass muster, and many were just data harvesters masquerading as security cameras.
Arlo became the undisputed leader with a wide range from the top-of-the-range 4K Ultra to its new Essential series that don’t need a dedicated security hub.
But the thing that really impressed us was its Privacy as a Pledge (a mandatory read) that no other security camera maker is prepared to match. In short, Arlo doesn’t sell your data as you pay an annual subscription fee. Its gear is not cheap, but it is 100% reliable and secure.
This was the year of damned fast PCIe NVMe SSDs and external storage. It is hard to nominate a winner because it all depends on your host device. In a PC you need an M2 2280 slot and at least four spare PCIe 3.1 lanes to get maximum speeds of about 3000MBps (all figures are approximate maximum sequential read/write)
If you have a PC with
USB-C 3.1 Gen 1 5Gbps then all you will get is 400MBps
USB-C 3.1 or 3.2 Gen 2 10Gbps then that will get 1000MBps
USB 2.0 480Mbps then about 30MBps (or worse)
And Thunderbolt 4 and USB-4 are coming with up to 40Gbps!
I will call it a draw this year because every drive we tested exceeded its speed parameters. Stick to Samsung, WD, SanDisk, Seagate or LaCie although I am very partial to the ultra-small ORICO external drives.
This was the year where COVID WFH convicts snapped up every laptop on retailer’s shelves. As such laptop reviews are a bit thin, which is a great way to get into the best of 2020.
In 2019 we heard of Intel’s Project Athena to certify small, light, instant-on and more responsive notebooks. HP (Spectre 13″ x360, EliteBook, DragonFly G2), Lenovo (Yoga S740 and C940, ThinkPad X1), Dell (XPS13, Inspiron, Latitude), Acer (Spin5, Swift3 and TravelMate P6) and ASUS (VivoBook 14 and ExpertBook B9) stepped up to the plate with some excellent, if not expensive notebooks.
Well, late 2020 and 2021 are all about Intel’s Project Evo and 11th generation Tiger Lake CPUs – Athena has grown up. First cab off the rank is Dynabook X30W-J that GadgetGuy is giving away. The review is done but not yet published, and it’s a ripper. Others to provide Evo notebooks include:
Acer Swift 5 (review coming), Dell XPS 13, HP Envy 13/x360, Lenovo 7i/9i/s7 and more from ASUS, LG, MSI, Razer and Samsung.
2020 was also the refresh of the Microsoft Surface line. Its Book 3 and Surface Pro 7 were Athena compliant. An overview is here, and Microsoft (and Samsung) slipped in Windows on ARM devices too. And I admit to an irrational soft spot for Microsoft Surface (any of them). It contradicts belief that Microsoft can produce older tech and charge more for it.
Oh and MacBooks went ARM too, but it’s a little early to talk about that.
If you want my picks for 2020 – HP Spectre 13″ x360 was the one to beat. It will be interesting to see the Evo version.
Anything from Logitech has to be in the first place. Their durable and fast mechanical G-series keyboards are the staple of GadgetGuy writers who are tired of wearing out cheap membrane keyboards.
The MX series of keyboards and mice were technology marvels working with multiple host computers.
Logitech webcams (if you can get them) including the excellent 4K Brio and 1080P@60fps Streamcam kept us going.
Ditto to monitors flying off the shelves. The keywords are 4K@60Hz, Thunderbolt 3 or USB-C 3.1 connectivity and much higher specs like 100% sRGB, Adobe RGB or DCI-P3.
Samsung had new curved monitors for gaming and business as well as a range of flat.
BenQ had a complete range with something for everyone. DesignerView, PhotoVue, VideoVue for professionals. And a range of gaming, consumer, stylish, and business monitors.
What impressed me was the new 4K range – I nearly cried having to send one back after review.
Ditto to printers flying off the shelves although I suspect the WFH (work from home) driver was the scanner ability.
Epson did a late 2020 refresh focusing on its EcoTank range (ET prefix) for a very low print cost using bulk ink tanks.
Canon was pretty quiet due to stock shortages. It focused too on the Endurance range (similar to EcoTank), and the review of the G7060 drove many sales.
HP did not announce any new printers, but it has over 200 models including its Smart Tank range (similar to EcoTank)
Brother had a bumper year selling everything it could get its hands on. It has INKvestment tank printers too.
My advice: Tank printers are the way to go for consumers who print a lot and look for a quality combo scanner, printer, and copier.
2020 was the year of GaN (Gallium Nitride) chargers. Some early models were shockers (pun intended). But as the year progressed Belkin released its excellent 68W GaN charger. Moral of the story – stick to well known Australian brands.
Belkin also released its excellent Gen 2 ThunderBolt 3 dock with 85W upstream charging.
There were heaps of Power banks, but the king was the Zendure SuperTank Pro 100W that is the most powerful to date and will charge a MacBook Pro.
Honourable mention to HPM for its well-made and great value USB-C Wireless charging hub and its 240V power products.
Honourable mention to the new ReZAP alkaline battery recharger has saved me thousands of dollars by recharging so-called one use alkaline batteries in the past decade.
Being a GadgetGuy is tough. Reviewing hundreds of lifestyle/tech items and usually having to send them back afterwards. And the inevitable party small talk, “What 2020 Home tech excited me?”
With the caveat that we have reviewed these (and there may be other brands out there) let’s go.
While Samsung, Sony and Hisense all have excellent comparable TVs, two LGs stood out from the pack.
The LG 65″ OLED has everything a TVphile could want. Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos decoding, HDMI 2.1, eARC and 120fps native refresh. The ultimate gamers TV with HGiG mode, Nvidia G-Sync, AMD FreeSync, Variable Refresh Rate and Auto Low Latency Mode for smooth, responsive gameplay.
If you see a Dolby Vision/Atmos movie, you will see there is no better OLED. RRP is $5399, but you can bag a bargain from $3780 from Videopro.
Runner up – LG Nano 91 series – Quantum Dot LED with OLED electronics and a very bright backlight. Perfect for large Aussie lounge rooms. Our pick is the 65″ 65NANO91TNA with an RRP of $3239, but you can get it from Videopro for $1880.
The $1899 has separate rear upwards and forwards firing speakers and a full complement of front speakers. It handles Dolby Atmos flawlessly. Why is it so good? There is no psychoacoustic trickery here trying to bounce sounds off walls and ceilings to get faux Atmos. You can get a bargain at Videopro for $1298. Although, if you are buying a TV and soundbar, then most major retailers will price match.
Runner up – none. We liked Samsung, but these are best as companions to the 2020 range of Samsung TVs. Be aware that your TV must support both Dolby Vision and Dolby Atmos for a Dolby Atmos soundbar to work. Our Dummies Guide to Dolby Atmos, and DTS is a great place to start if you need to know more about Atmos TVs and speakers.
PS – if you don’t have Dolby Atmos support then the JBL soundbar range gets my tick for value and sound quality.
#3 Bluetooth ANC Headphones – various
While this area is audiophile Thomas Bartlett’s bailiwick, we don’t all have the money to spend. One stood out from the crowd as the best all-rounder – Sennheiser PXC 550-II. These $549.95 are on runout sale at the ludicrous price of $299 at JB Hi-Fi. These have all the codecs you need for Apple and Android, are lightweight for travel and have the remarkable Sennheiser sound and quality.
Thomas Bartlett and I are poles apart on this. He thinks the $399 BlueAnt X5 (any X-series) is a great party speaker. I think the Sony ExtraBass SRS series takes the cake. Either way, it is nice to include an Aussie company in the line-up.
Not strictly Bluetooth but Wi-Fi is the Sonos range. The Google Assistant equipped Sonos Move is the best Google speaker of the year. I also fell in love with the Sonos Five as a superb Wi-Fi lounge 3.0 speaker with six amp and the sweetest music I have heard from Spotify. OK Google can cast to it as well – they are not a Google speaker. I want to get an extra one and run them as a stereo pair – please Santa.
Honourable mention to Google Nest Audio – a giant leap forward for a $149 Google Assistant speaker. Google now dominates the smart speaker market with >75% of sales. It seems its functionality and not being part of an online megastore resonates with Aussies.
#5 Smartphone – various depending on the price
The one that stood out this year as the best all-around was – you guessed it – a quadfecta – the amazing LG Velvet at $909. Terrific camera, 6.8″ OLED screen, excellent sound, micro-SD, great battery life and wireless charge, 5G/4G and most importantly the highest IP68/MIL-STD construction of any phone. You can get it at JB Hi-Fi for $719 or Catch.com.au for $698 including free delivery.
Runner-up: Read our article Best Android phones from $100-1000 – update November 2020 and remember 85% of all smartphone sales are <$699. There are some great value and performance phones from Motorola (g9 series), Samsung (A-series), OPPO (Find and Reno series), realme and vivo.
The high-tech kitchen appliance that keeps on giving and giving. It has largely replaced my Weber BBQ, stovetop and oven in one well-designed, well-made mini Grill, Air Fry, Roast, Bake and Dehydrate. It is perfect for two people, but we made the Xmas lunch for four comprising hot baked honey glazed ham, roast boneless lamb leg, roast turkey breast, and a full complement of roast vegies all in the Ninja. Best thing – one easy to clean cook pot.
First a caveat – all Air Purifiers we reviewed this year (and there were heaps) work extremely well. Honourable mentions to Samsung, ionmax UV, Coway, Philips, Sharp ion Plasmacluster and Airfree. But there is one main difference with the Dyson – they double as effective fans and heaters.
Why buy? Simple if you suffer from allergies, hay-fever, asthma these make an appreciable difference to the air quality.
The main thing to look for is to buy a capacity (Clean Air Delivery Rate in m3) larger than the room you place it in.
#8 Robovacs
There are many ways to rate a robot vacuum cleaner. But the most practical is can you leave it unattended and trust it to do the job. This relates to its intelligence and object recognition. If you asked me in 2019, I would have said I trust none.
My favourite on the trust scale and power efficiency is the Neato D7 that 9-out-of-10 times will do the job flawlessly. It is not cheap at $1999, but the Robot Shop has it for $1199, making it the 2020 bargain.
We are looking forward to 2021 as mapping technology is moving quickly ahead and we will see more brands like Ecovacs, Xiaomi and others, power ahead at lower costs.
#9 Smart Toothbrush
Thomas Bartlett likes the $499.99 Oral-B Genius AI electronic toothbrush, and I like the $379 Philips DiamondClean 9000. He likes the Bluetooth app, and I did not. I really can’t see the value in either app. In any case, both offer superior cleaning to the cheapies. My recommendation is to buy the model below that with Bluetooth.
I don’t recall the last time I used a traditional under the tongue thermometer – so yesterday. The MedSense by Andatech work very well, are inexpensive, and are TGA approved. We tested two models – one that is more for home and the other more for professionals and these are the ultimate in convenience. Interestingly we learned that the difference between COVID positive or not is just .3 of a degree, so accuracy is vital.
