Stuff UKの August 2018 の目次

Let the mass exodus commence. No, I’m not talking about huge swathes of the population fleeing as Brexit negotiations continue, but those of you off on your summer holidays, queuing at departure lounges and ports wearing people-cancelling headphones to block out the pandemonium. Stuck here at Stuff HQ, we’re not the slightest bit jealous – and to prove it we’ve gathered a must-have list of the travel gadgets you probably haven’t realised you need yet. We’re so good to you we’ve even added the best budgie-smugglers and shades for peacocking it around the pool like you’re Andreas Möller at Euro 96. There’s no point flying off to paradise if you can’t capture the moment, so we’ve also put together a picture-perfect photo special showcasing the best cameras, accessories and expert…

HANDS-FREE TV Amazon Fire TV Cube Once upon a time, you had to get off of your backside to change TV channels. Imagine! Now you tell tiny remotes what you want to watch. But if even that sounds like too much effort, there’s Amazon’s Fire TV Cube, a box-shaped, hands-free mash-up of the Fire TV, an Echo speaker and a universal remote that can stream 4K HDR video with Dolby Atmos audio. What really sets this apart from its predecessor, though, is the eight-strong arsenal of far-field microphones and beam-forming tech, which means you can bark at it from any direction to have it switch shows and inputs, adjust the volume, and interact with Alexa. IR blasters on four of its sides allow it to chat to your soundbars and…

1 Scalak £1.99 / iOS, Android At first you drag a square piece to a square hole… but before long Scalak is like an exploded Rubik’s Cube, as you drag, rotate and match while steam shoots from your ears. 2 Blade Runner: Revelations £7.99 / Android Daydream Set in between the two cinematic outings, this VR actioner has you uncovering clues and shooting things as you hunt a replicant. 3 Homo Machina £2.99 / iOS, Android Here you delve into someone’s insides, represented as a giant 1920s factory. We’re sure this is entirely scientifically accurate. Your aim is simple: function! 4 Cosmic Watch £4.99 / iOS For when digital clocks just won’t do, here’s a crazed mash-up of planetarium and timepiece. As the seconds tick by, your position in the…

1 Oakley Crossrange Shield These sunnies improve your visibility by making colours noticeably more vivid – like HDR for your summer holiday. £150 / uk.oakley.com 2 Rapha Pro Team Arenberg Designed for serious cyclists, these have no central bar, while vents around the frame stop you from steaming up. £150 / rapha.cc 3 Adidas Pacyr Brown There’s more to these than meets the eye(s) – like a shatterproof frame and grippy nose-pads to ensure they don’t slide off your face in the middle of a run. £72 / sportsshoes.com 4 Silhouette Urban Sun These lightweight sunglasses make a feather seem heavy, and you’re probably going to forget they’re on your face. They are, though, and don’t you look great. £190 / pretavoir.co.uk 5 Dragon Alliance Drac These float, so no…

WHAT THE PRO SAYS A bee is a rare find nowadays but definitely worth the wait! Compositionally, leaving space around the subject allows room for the viewer to imagine the location – and also allows more time to get a great shot as the bee flies away. MACRO PHOTO TIPS Don’t rock the boat To draw out the tiniest details so they appear clearly, it’s crucial you avoid camera shake. Use a remote release to reduce any blurring. Take the tube If you can’t afford a macro lens, try adding an extension tube instead. It fits between the mount and lens to increase magnification. Stack attack Take multiple photos of the same subject and composition, but with slightly different focal points, then hit ‘focus stack’. Thank us later. FUJIFILM X…

WHAT THE PRO SAYS Squirrels are pretty tame in London, so they make good subjects to test out long lenses on. Always remember to focus on the eyes; your background will always be out of focus when working this close, so even a dodgy park will look like a nature reserve. WILDLIFE PHOTO TIPS Draw a blank Wildlife photos with the greatest impact tend to be on simple backdrops, clear of distractions, ensuring your subject stands out. Bring on the night Animal silhouettes are best captured at sunset when the sky is at its most colourful. Locate the ‘low light’ or ‘sunset’ function to aid you. Play the waiting game Research the behaviour, movements and habitat of what you want to shoot and remain patient – no one ever caught…

WHAT THE PRO SAYS My first attempt with a drone camera – but it’s easy to see why they’re so popular. Controlling the image from your phone soon becomes a pleasure. A different perspective generally makes a scene stand out from the masses, so remember to get good and high with your drone to make the average dog-walk seem epic. AERIAL PHOTO TIPS Have some perspective Play around with seeing things from a totally fresh perspective (ie above) to unearth aerial patterns, symmetry and optical illusions. Divide and conquer Sharp lines can make for crazy compositions. Frame shots so lines extend entirely top to bottom, left to right or even diagonally. Explore new horizons Use the Mavic Air’s panoramic modes and you’ll capture vistas that go on for miles –…

1 Denon Envaya Pocket DSB-50BT £80 / denon.co.uk The tech in most hotel rooms begins and ends with a travel kettle; so if you want something to soundtrack your afterparty, you could do worse than Denon’s teeny Envaya Pocket. It comes in boring black or this natty Municipal Library Carpet Beige, and goes just loud enough that the only people you’ll have banging on the walls are the ones who want to come and join the fun. 2 Boom Travel+ £30 / findyourboom.com Stick the little Boom Travel+ plug adaptor in your cabin baggage and it’ll be to hand as soon as you land – and what’s more, if your phone needs perking up mid-flight you can use its built-in 6000mAh battery to make sure it doesn’t conk out before…

1 Disc Jock-e £28 / thefowndry.com Proper audiophiles will always tell you good sound quality is all about getting your speaker placement absolutely right, so chucking a Disc Jock-e at them is likely to cause a few to break out into a cold sweat. This Bluetooth speaker doubles as a frisbee – but thankfully it’s also waterproof, so it doesn’t matter if your aim is a bit off. With playback buttons on the top, you can keep your smartphone tucked away in a bag and inflict that new Sting and Shaggy album on as many fellow beachgoers as possible. What’s not to like? 2 Kindle Oasis £230 / amazon.co.uk There’s one annoying trait that ebook readers share with their analogue ancestors: they don’t like going for a swim, no matter…

NETFLIX Having impressively pivoted from being an online DVD bargain bin to a streaming service for superb shows (Black Mirror, Stranger Things), Netflix is an excellent choice to feast your eyes on yet more original content. The apps are solid and you get a 30-day free trial. NOW TV Essentially pay-as-yougo Sky, Now TV provides a smattering of original content, but also big shows like Game of Thrones, Elementary and the bonkers Legion. You get 14 days free. Watch out for regular sales too – and the offers you’ll get on threatening to unsubscribe. BBC IPLAYER Auntie keeps plugging away, and even though it might seem like an anachronism, its own digital offering is pretty smart. iPlayer gives you access to a slew of recent shows, which can be watched…

Kindle for Samsung The Samsung edition of Amazon’s reading app has been optimised for Galaxy phones, and it also dishes out a free book every month. £free Evernote Our favourite organisation app should be one of the first things you download. It syncs notes across devices so you’ll always have your shopping list handy. £free Gboard We’re not at all dissing Samsung’s keyboard but Google’s is still the better option, with features such as glide typing, voice typing and Google Translate all proving to be super-useful. £free…

1 HOT BUY PlayStation 4 Pro £350 / stuff.tv/PS4Pro As a gaming platform, PlayStation 4 is the best around – which makes the PS4 Pro the best of the best. Games optimised for the new console look stunning on a 4K HDR TV, and are substantially improved by the extra grunt inside this slightly bigger machine. Sure, it can’t match the Xbox One X for sheer power or resolution, but it makes up for that with an impressive line-up of games – including Uncharted 4, Horizon Zero Dawn and Bloodborne – and virtual reality support. Stuff says The system for console gamers who have a 4K TV and want the best catalogue of games on offer 2 Nintendo Switch £280 / stuff.tv/NintendoSwitch Nintendo’s console has earned a promotion in our…

I LOVE FOOTBALL; DO NOT DISTURB The World Cup is the greatest show on earth, so I spent the past month transforming Chez Day into a soccerball fortress. That meant installing a ViewSonic PX747-4K projector capable of handling BBC iPlayer’s 4K HDR streams, a Linksys Velop mesh network to fend off any battles for my bandwith, and a Nest Hello video doorbell for telling the Deliveroo driver to leave the goddam sushi on the doorstep while I watch England twat some penalties into row ZZ. Glorious. James Day, Editor I TOOK A TRIP TO THE REAL LEGO LAND Think I’m talking about Windsor? Pah. That’s a pale imitation of what you’ll find in Billund, Denmark: the birthplace of the toy bricks. Not only is there a theme park like the…

€23,980 / ballfinger.de Back to reel music, is it? Vinyl isn’t the only vintage audio format making a comeback. The cassette has enjoyed a resurgence (likely off the back of Guardians of the Galaxy and Stranger Things) and now, with this gorgeous Ballfinger deck, reel-to-reel tape has become desirable again. It’s nailed on to become the essential accessory for a certain type of well-heeled trendster who truly ‘gets’ the power of nostalgia. But… what’s it actually for? This isn’t some empty style gesture. Reel-to-reel tape is a high-quality recording medium favoured by the likes of Lady Gaga and Ryan Adams, and it’s what all records were mixed to before the digital age. So you’ll be lusting after this if you’re a producer in search of analogue purity… or if you’re…

PKTBALL (£free) High-octane Pong, packed with crazed collectable characters and backgrounds. Frantic fun, especially in multiplayer. VIRTUAL TENNIS CHALLENGE (£free) Tennis as lobbed onto your device from Sega’s classic arcade series. It’s fast and furious – just ditch gestures for the virtual joypad. TIMBER TENNIS (£free) Dart left and right, returning shots to power up your smash meter, which unsportingly turns your opponent into a gravestone when you win.…

Pocket Run Pool from £free / iOS Pool is snooker’s inebriated cousin. Instead of waistcoats and polished balls, you get stale beer and table surfaces that look like they’ve been attacked by Wolverine. We’re glad to report that none of these problems exist in the marvellous Pocket Run Pool – a puzzler as much as it’s an arcade game, with simplified one-thumb controls. You still sink balls, but your points tally depends on a ball’s number and the multiplier on the pocket you sink it in. Multipliers move every turn, forcing you to think ahead – or try for crazy trick shots. Beyond the basic mode, there’s Break of the Week (pre-arranged balls), Insta-Tournament (one attempt to set a high score, thereafter compared against the world), and High Stakes. That…

FARR FESTIVAL Held in abandoned woodland on the outskirts of London, Farr Festival is a real Goldilocks scenario for electronic music fans: big enough to attract names like Daphni and Mount Kimbie, but still very much an intimate, boutique affair. MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: FALLOUT Six films in, and there’s a serious conversation to be had about renaming this ever-reliable Tom Cruise-fronted movie series Mission Actually Surprisingly Achievable, given that Ethan Hunt is still here, still flinging himself out of planes and defusing bafflingly complex bombs in the nick of time. It’s admittedly not as catchy, though. MEGA MAN X LEGACY COLLECTION Yes, it’s another retro gaming collection, but the prospect of loading all eight Mega Man X titles onto your Switch – with optional smoothing, CRT filters and the ability to…

WHAT THE PRO SAYS Street photography often requires some discretion; and with this little camera, staying in the shadows enabled me to get a sharp silhouette framed by the bridge’s shadow. Using graphic lines of light is a surefire way to make a clean and pleasing image, but remember to expose for the highlights rather than the shadows. STREET PHOTO TIPS Watch your speed Select Program AE to set exposure, but offer different combinations of shutter speed and aperture so the camera won’t shoot too fast. Get in the zone Zone focusing means switching to manual and pre-focusing to a specific distance and aperture. It’s a street photography favourite. Behave yourself Manners cost nothing but a smashed camera might, so be nice to the locals. Ask permission to take a…

WHAT THE PRO SAYS Shooting down onto food is very popular as it gives the subject space to breathe and sets the scene. Use a wide aperture to focus on the main ingredient and let the fall-off from the lens do the rest. Natural side light is best, but this can be recreated with artificial lighting in the studio. WIN THIS CAMERA! SEE P31 FOOD PHOTO TIPS Get busy With food, an interesting background and foreground can tell an extra story. So surround the plate with props relating to the dish. Have a light lunch Consider sitting near the window with indirect light, then cover the window with a white napkin to act as a diffuser. Play all the angles Different foods look better from different angles, so check your…

1 DJI Mavic Air £769 / dji.com Most drones are so big they come in their own suitcase, which is less than ideal if you want to haul one up a mountain with you or take it out into the wilds to track your riding trails. DJI’s Mavic Air, on the other hand, folds neatly right up and weighs just 430g, so you can easily stick it in the top of your backpack. It still offers awesome 4K footage and 12MP HDR stills, though its diminutive dimensions mean flight time takes a bit of a hit. Oh well – you can just use some of that space you’re saving to pack extra batteries. 2 GoTenna Mesh from £199 for 2 / gotenna.com If you’re a genuine adrenaline junkie, the kind…

1 G-RO Carry-on Classic £399 / uk.g-ro.com When you’re queuing at passport control, frequent flyers will judge you based on your choice of luggage. Show them you know what’s what by taking one of these G-RO suitcases, which comes with a built-in (but removable) 10,000 mAh battery and two USB ports to make use of it, plus a Tile Slim Bluetooth locator so you’ll always know where it is. And the GravityRoll wheels make this the luggage equivalent of an all-terrain vehicle. 2 Panasonic Lumix DC-TZ200 £729 / jessops.com Zoom lenses take up a lot of space, right? Wrong! The 15x optical zoom on Panasonic’s TZ200 concertinas inside a pocket-sized body – and combined with the 20.1MP sensor and Leica lens, it makes for a great all-rounder that’s ready for…

1 HOT BUY Huawei P20 Pro £799 / stuff.tv/P20Pro While Samsung and Apple’s war for smartphone supremacy rages on, Huawei has sauntered up and knocked both companies off their feet with the P20 Pro. Serious snappers will love this flagship phone thanks to the triple-lens camera, with 5x zoom and a 40MP main sensor. Add to that a quite awesome AMOLED display, lightning-fast internals and a top-notch design, and you’ve got yourself a recipe for the best new smartphone of 2018. Stuff says That triple-lens cam gives the P20 Pro the edge in the smartphone wars • NOW ADD THIS AModern Huawei P20 Pro Case With its fragile back, you’ll want a case for your P20 Pro – one that accommodates the three sensors. £6.99 / amazon.co.uk • TIPS &…

NETFLIX Cargo Australia is already terrifying with all its killer toilet-spiders, so imagine if zombies were thrown into the mix. Poor Martin Freeman doesn’t have to use his imagination, as that’s exactly what he’s faced with in this Netflix thriller. The Social Network Facebook creator Mark Zuckerberg has been popping up in the news a lot this year, but how much do you really know about him? David Fincher’s film tells the controversial tale of his rise to ubiquitous annoyingness. Suits (S8) The royal wedding didn’t have terrible consequences on the scale of a Game of Thrones marriage, but it did lead to Meghan Markle leaving lawyer-drama Suits. On the positive side, Katherine Heigl will be replacing her in court. AMAZON VIDEO Pacific Rim Humans using giant mecha suits to…

1 HOT BUY Oculus Rift £399 / stuff.tv/OculusTouch The Oculus Rift has been playing catch-up for a while; but now that it’s got the fantastic Touch Controllers, has boosted its room-tracking capabilities to match the Vive and has had a price drop to undercut HTC’s standard headset by £100, it finally deserves to top our VR headset rankings. Its library of exclusive games has grown considerably since launch too, with the likes of Robo Recall, Lucky’s Tale and Lone Echo all added. This is now the best VR headset available that doesn’t cost the world. Stuff says Thanks to the price cut and much-needed updates, the Rift is now the best reasonably-priced VR headset 2 HTC Vive £499 / stuff.tv/HTCVive Barring a £100 price difference, there isn’t much difference between…

1 HOT BUY Sky Q from £20 + £20/month / stuff.tv/SkyQ Sky Q works flawlessly and could change the way you watch TV – especially now 4K’s arrived. With Sky Movies’ huge range of films and Sky Sports’ frequent doses of football and F1 now all in stunning Ultra HD, there’s something for everyone to treat their eyes with. And 2TB of storage means you can record 350 hours’ worth of entertainment, so you’re unlikely to be sweating over which show needs deleting. Factor in its multiroom skills, and Sky Q is undoubtedly the best TV experience you can get. Stuff says You’ll have to cough up for a subscription, but this is the best box for watching both live and recorded shows 2 HOT BUY Q Acoustics Media 4…

Stop trying to make flying cars happen. You said that about robot butlers, and now you’ve got a tube in your kitchen that turns the lights on and off when you ask it to – so how about a little bit of patience, eh? This is UberAir, and while it does look a lot like the countless other flying-car concepts that have appeared over the years, this one isn’t just blue-sky thinking: the taxi-in-your-pocket company has already signed up five aerospace companies to make its all-electric aircraft, and the plan is to have them actually in the air by 2023. Besides, it’s not a flying car, it’s a VTOL. And what’s a VTOL when it’s at home? It stands for vertical take-off and landing, which means you could summon one…

BACK IN BLACK (AND SILVER) BlackBerry Key2 Sure to terrify anyone under the age of 16, the BlackBerry Key2 is still rocking a physical keyboard, complete with built-in fingerprint scanner and a new Speed Key, which you can customise for quick switching between various apps and functions. It’s also the first BlackBerry to feature a dual-camera setup on the rear. These 12MP snappers offer better white balance, faster autofocus and improved stabilisation, while the new Portrait mode means you can finally boast about your bokeh. Everything runs on Android 8.1 Oreo, and you can think of the retained headphone jack as the cherry (or berry) on top. A mobile phone revolution this is not; but if you find writing naff jokes in email chains that little bit more satisfying when…

#1 iOS 12 The next iOS update brings AR improvements, Siri user automation, big upgrades to key apps, cracking features to stop your iPhone or iPad taking over your life, and the ability to create ‘Memojis’ that look like you. #2 MACOS MOJAVE Our attention here turned to a rather lovely new Dark Mode that’ll make late-night work a bit more bearable. Desktop stacks helps de-clutter your desktop, and Finder gets a new Gallery view to quick-locate images. #3 WATCHOS 5 Still no third-party watch faces, but Apple Watch owners should be happy enough with features like competitive activity-ring closing, automatic workout detection, an improved Siri watch face, and podcasts on Watch. #4 TVOS Apple TV didn’t get too much attention at the software-focused conference, but we did get the…

WHAT THE PRO SAYS Having the model wearing a strong colour in the foreground with the lake in the background at night allowed me to make her stand out – and push the camera’s ISO high enough while hand-holding it to keep enough detail in both the foreground and the background. LOW-LIGHT PHOTO TIPS Set cameras to stun Stopping down your aperture can turn street lighting into starbursts. Set the shutter speed to ‘bulb’ to encourage the merits of long exposure. Like it RAW Nightscapes always look better when shot in RAW format. They’re higher-quality and you get more detail to play with in post-production. Do the white thing Don’t overlook white balance. City scenes usually mix warm and cool lighting from varied sources, so manually select what suits best.…

WHAT THE PRO SAYS Visiting Box Hill always guarantees a few cyclists. Waiting for one in the right colour will enable a wide view of the countryside and introduce scale to the shot. Always try to frame up so there are paths to lead the viewer’s eye through the image. LANDSCAPE PHOTO TIPS Get your priorities right Shooting landscapes in Aperture Priority mode controls the depth of field while the camera takes care of getting a suitable shutter speed. Enter the twilight zone Just because it’s getting dark, don’t go home – check the sunset time. Twilight can bathe the land in blue and violet light to awesome effect. Go wide Your location and subject will dictate focal length and technique, but always pack a wide, ultra-wide or telephoto lens…

Contrary to popular belief, video doorbells are nothing new. Yale released its own many years ago, displaying perfectly usable images of Jehovah’s Witnesses from inside the front door. The thing is, those who had one installed rarely used it. But that’s no reason to dismiss the idea out of hand. Whether you’re vulnerable to questionable strangers, fed up of salesmen or even growing special herbs in the attic, you’re probably going to have a use for spying on whoever’s outside the front door. So why did doorbells like Yale’s flop? Most likely because they were limited on the features front. So it’s hello, Hello to Nest’s chiming web-connected snooper with built-in Wi-Fi, two-way audio and a fisheye camera so you can see and talk to anyone at the door from…

1 Scrubba £40 / thescrubba.com If you’re worrying about getting your clothes dirty, you’re going to get a big surprise when you find out where everyone goes to the toilet at a festival. But if you really must freshen up your vintage Dire Straits T-shirt halfway through the weekend, get a Scrubba. It works like an old-fashioned washboard: just add water and detergent, squeeze out the air, give the contents a good rub and you’ll be smelling like roses again in no time. It’s just a shame it’ll probably make the stink of everybody else more noticeable. 2 KitSound Diggit £40 / kitsound.co.uk There’s nothing worse than getting back to your tent after a hard day festival-ing to find some berk on the campsite, usually sporting socks and sandals, banging…

THE BASICS ■ Filter and search From the menu (Android) or top tabs (iOS), you can access the Prime Video homepage, which provides recommendations. Scroll down to browse by genre and use the search field to find something specific. Be mindful not all results will be available on Prime, though. ■ Take control Whenever you’re watching a show, tap the screen to bring up controls. If Amazon hurls a pre-roll ad your way, skip it here. You also get play/pause, skip forwards/backwards (10 seconds), and a timeline scrubber (with preview and timecode) for finding your place. If you’re somewhere noisy, tap the speech balloon button and you can turn on subtitles. ■ Optimise Prime In Settings, go to Stream(ing) & Download(ing) to adjust video streaming quality. On smartphones you can…

from £3299 / stuff.tv/LGE8 DAY 01 LG’s OLED TV department must have had a blinder of a Christmas party last year. While most manufacturers finally decided OLED was worth pursuing in 2017, LG had already romped home victorious by balancing price and performance in a way that none of its rivals could. This year, LG has decided to leave its panels well alone and instead place its focus on what goes on behind the scenes. That is, making sure its TVs run faster and smarter than ever thanks to the new Alpha 9 picture processor. The tweaks might look small on paper, but they add up to make a significant difference to picture quality. Before I can ogle the display, though, I have to set it up. To my relief,…

Should I upgrade? ONEPLUS 6 DO IT! Flashier design Speedier chip HOLD OFF! Same resolution Camera is so-so Ryan Jones Staff Writer Six months is not a long time. If your ex told you he or she had changed only six months after your break-up, you’d probably laugh. (And then cry for a bit.) Yet here’s OnePlus, trying to convince us its new flagship is a huge upgrade on the OnePlus 5T despite arriving only half a year later. Forget about the short timeframe and put the OnePlus 6 beside its predecessor, however, and only someone with eyes blurred by tears would suggest the two phones look identical. That’s because OnePlus has trimmed down the bezels and added that iPhone-esque notch up top. And even if you flip the two…

1 iNaturalist Why watch a documentary about Africa when you don’t even know what’s living in your garden? iNaturalist helps you identify the many critters roaming about the UK, while you can also upload your own discoveries. £free / iOS, Android 2 Story of Life This collection of Attenborough videos showcases the TV legend’s greatest moments while filming beasties in their natural habitats. From Africa to Blue Planet, the app has taken highlights from his 60 years of doc-making. £free / iOS, Android 3 The Wildlife Trusts: Nature Finder Stop reading about wildlife and see it for yourself. This handy app lets you know the locations of the 2000 Wildlife Trusts reserves in the UK, as well as upcoming events and all the nature info you’ll need. £free / iOS, Android…