Innholdsfortegnelse for October 2017 i Stuff UK

When the cyborg uprising finally happens, I for one will welcome our new overlords. Why? Because robots are straight up better than humans. So, while we’re still some way offfrom a world where Wall-E is in charge instead of The Donald, there’s no harm in prepping for the inevitable. That’s why this issue we’ve scoured the tech world for its finest robot offerings, from Dyson’s 360 Eye vacuum to Sphero’s BB-8 and Lego’s new Boost Creative Toolkit. And don’t worry – for now at least, they’re all benevolent. Despite what your parents might have told you, one thing that definitely won’t be the end of us all is video games. So we ran a vote in the office to uncover the best games of all time, and rounded up the…

LEAP ON! £free / Android, iOS Leap around a star of death that you’re attached to by a strand of elastic. Go high, grab bonuses, and wonder why you didn’t bring scissors. RUN JUMP DIE £2.99 / iOS Tap and hold to guide a heroic bunny through platforming hell. It’s Super Mario Run with long ears and a cotton-ball tail, as designed by a sadist. SPIN ADDICT free / iOS Swipe to set a chunk of metal spinning, and then have it survive in an abstract industrial world that’s presumably the metal’s own fever dream.…

1 On The Rocks Whisky Blocks Real drinkers don’t need mixers, and that includes water. These granite cubes keep your whisky chilled without melty dilution. £14.99 / firebox.com 2 BarWise Magnetic Bottle Opener This sleek gadget will free your drink of choice from its bottle while magnetically holding onto the metal cap. Tidy. £8 / josephjoseph.com 3 Urban Bar 360 Muddler (245mm) This cocktail stirrer will leave your juicy bits more blitzed than Don Draper after five whiskies, ensuring maximum flavour. £7.85 / urbanbar.com 4 Gun Metal Black Cocktail Shaker Shaking cocktails in a glass can be quite the splashy challenge. This 500ml metal container, on the other hand, makes it a cinch. £16.99 / drinkstuff.com 5 Otis Champagne/Cocktail Glass (x4) Save the plastic beakers for your homebrew and treat…

Ikea used to be all about meatballs, insanely long queues and infuriating flatpack furniture with funny names. But since launching its own wireless charging kit and inviting itself into your smart home with its Tradfri lighting, things have taken a turn for the techy at everyone’s favourite Swedish bookcase-flogger. The latest product heading towards its catalogue might look like an astronaut’s fridge-freezer… but this is Ikea’s home battery, which you can have installed in your house to store the surplus energy generated by that bank of solar panels you had fitted to the roof. Right now that energy gets sold back to your supplier at a loss, so storing it for future use, or to charge up your new Tesla, makes much more financial sense. Ikea won’t make the batteries…

5 ATARI 2600 FACTS YOU DIDN’T KNOW • Accounting for inflation, the Atari 2600 would cost about £600 today. • More so than Pong, it was Space Invaders that was the system seller for the 2600. • After it tanked, Atari buried 1000 copies of its ET game in a New Mexico landfill. • The 2600 was capable of reproducing 128 colours in the US, but only 104 in the UK. • Unlike modern consoles, the 2600 actually came bundled with two controllers. THE RIVAL Commodore 64 Kids these days have it too easy – they don’t even have to type out code before they can play a game! THE CONSOLE Atari 2600 1977 The machine that first thrust console gaming into the mainstream almost put the very same industry out of business…

THE RIVAL Sega Mega Drive It may have lost the battle, and the war afterwards, but the Mega Drive had a number of classics. THE CONSOLE Nintendo SNES 1990 Arguably Nintendo’s crowning achievement, this 16-bit system was treated to a near-constant stream of classics during its six-year lifespan. It wasn’t just Ninty hitting it out of the park either: from Super Star Wars to Chrono Trigger and Mega Man X, there was just so much good stuff released for the SNES that it’s no wonder fans are frothing at the mouth for the Classic edition. Such is the demand that half the Stuff office have pre-ordered theirs already, and that can only mean one thing: a fight to the death for the early review unit. Streets of Rage 2 Stuff’s most idyllic…

THE RIVAL Nintendo 64 Turns out 3D Mario and Zelda adventures weren’t quite enough for the N64 to topple the debut PlayStation. 5 PLAYSTATION FACTS YOU DIDN’T KNOW • The PlayStation was originally made to be a CD-ROM add-on for Nintendo’s SNES. • 2418 games were officially released for the PS1. • The standard PS1 memor y card could only hold 1MB. • You’d need 236 original PlayStation consoles combined to achieve similar processing power to the PS Vita. • Sony didn’t stop production of PS1 games until 2006. THE CONSOLE Sony PlayStation 1994 It didn’t take long for the Stuff staff to settle on the all-time king of consoles. We flirted with the Xbox 360 and were tempted by the SNES, but in the end it was Sony that emerged victorious –…

1 Open up, it’s the coppers Even if you spend a fortune on a wallet, you can’t guarantee it’ll have a zipped pocket for your change. Unless you only ever use cards, you’d best check. 2 Don’t have a cow, man Many premium wallets are made of leather. If you’d rather not have your money bundled in cattle hide, you can find options made from synthetic materials such as Tyvek. 3 Scram, scanner scammers High-tech thieves have found ways to steal details from our contactless cards using scanners. Fortunately, RFID-blocking wallets can give your cards added security. 4 Tile be back Can’t decide between a traditional wallet’s good looks and a smart wallet’s tracking capabilities? By placing a Tile Mate (£19.99) in you wallet, you’ll be able to track it…

LEGO BOOST CREATIVE TOOLBOX Ryan Jones, Staff Writer Whose bright idea was it to teach kids how to code? It won’t be long until they leave us over-12s on the scrapheap with their robot manipulation skills. Still, at least they can’t put them together without an engineering degree. Hang on, they can build one out of Lego now? And they only need a tablet to get it moving and firing projectiles at us? Yep… and worst of all, Vernie the Robot can be rebuilt into four other, very different forms. There’s only one way we can hold off these code-crazy kids: beat them at their own game. One Lego ’bot, please! £150 / stuff.tv/LegoBoost ROBOTS IN DISGUISE CREATIVE TOOLBOX OPTIONS 1 FRANKIE THE CAT Frankie is just like any real…

It’s an iMac… only better. That’s about all you need to know. Oh, you want specifics? Fair enough. Underneath the familiar ultra-minimal silver shell, Apple has given its dinkiest desktop a major makeover. We’re not talking about a few tweaks, but rather a complete overhaul. The new iMac has a faster CPU, speedier storage, and dedicated graphics to push all those pixels. And lets not forget a bright 4K display that uses the same wide colour gamut as the digital 4K projectors in your local multiplex. Only this time it’s even brighter and more colourful. Out of all the improvements, it’s the screen that really makes this 21.5in iMac stand out – and if you’re going to spend all day staring at one, you want it to be the absolute…

Apple’s design team might have put their feet up this year, but when the iMac was already one of the best-looking all-in-ones out there, can you blame them? The superior screen and faster CPU only cement its place at the top. Make no mistake, though: all three machines are superb, and all earn their high scores. Microsoft pulled an absolute blinder with the Surface Studio – although it’s hugely expensive and feels like overkill if you’re not a design pro. Glorious, beautifully made overkill. For most people determined to stick with Windows, the HP Envy is the better buy – that curved screen is just fantastic to work on, and it’s got real multimedia muscle. Now add these Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 Wireless Some headphones just fit – and we’re not…

£60 / stuff.tv/NokiaBody ■ Up until now, Nokia has only rebranded existing Withings scales since it gobbled up the French company – but these Body scales are completely new. They’re cheap too, sitting £30 below the Body+ and £90 below the heart-tracking Body Cardio. ■ The Body scales have an attractive glass-fronted design. Step on them and they’ll flash up your weight, a graph of your recent entries, your BMI, and finally the day’s weather forecast. ■ These scales only measure one thing: your weight, in kilos, pounds or old-school stones. Unlike pricier options, they can’t measure things like fat or muscle mass; but they can fling your data to the Health Mate app over Wi-Fior Bluetooth, which is useful for tracking your long-term progress. ■ Once you’ve got the…

1 Gousto You may be motivated to get creative in the kitchen, but going all the way to Tesco is another matter. Gousto is a quick solution, delivering you a box of ingredients for your cherrypicked meals. from £25 / gousto.co.uk 2 Hello Fresh It’s a wee bit expensive, but this company prides itself on having fresh produce that tastes sublime. You can pick between the Classic, Veggie and Family boxes, and follow a whole host of recipes to get the most out of your cash. from £35 / hellofresh.co.uk 3 Simply Cook This service is slightly different to the two above as it doesn’t ship fresh food. Instead, it supplies you with pastes, oils, herbs and garnishes, as well as some tasty recipes, so your meals have maximum flavour.…

HOT BUY PlayStation 4 Pro £340 / playstation.com 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. If you’ve already splashed out for a 4K HDR screen and you enjoy video games at all, it’s well worth the upgrade. The missing 4K Blu-ray drive means it isn’t a perfect entertainment system, but streaming converts won’t care. Stuff say The system for console gamers who have a 4K TV and want the best gaming experience possible Xbox One S from £230 / xbox.com Microsoft dumps Kinect, the £400+ asking price and the fugly…

HOT BUY Sky Q from £20 + £22/month / sky.com 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 Q Acoustics Media 4 £299 / qacoustics.co.uk This…

HOT BUY Fujifilm X-T20 £799 / fujifilm.eu Coming with the same 24.3MP APS-C sensor and processor as the X-T2, plus a touchscreen (which its sibling lacks), the X-T20 will leave you with a lot more spare cash in your account. And for most people, the model will deliver results that are just as good as its pricier big brother’s. With well laid-out controls, a huge viewfinder, excellent autofocus and access to superb lenses, the X-T20 is just one more fantastic mirrorless camera from Fujifilm. Stuff says The X-T20 nails the sweet spot between price and performance NOW ADD THIS Manfrotto 190 Go! Carbon Fibre Tripod You no longer have an excuse for wobbly photos with this carbon-fibre tripod. It weighs just 1.65kg. £235 / manfrotto.co.uk TIPS & TRICKS For aperture-priority…

I STARTED A WATER FIGHT WITH FOXES Don’t get me wrong, I like foxes. But their daily garden ‘markings’ and 3am screams have forced me to start Operation Watergun. A true nerd would have built his motion-activated water pistol with a Raspberry Pi and PIR sensor, but I lazily bought mine. The Home Defence Scarecrow (£42 / amazon.co.uk) has worked a treat, with my furry friends scurrying from its spray as if it were a garden-based ED-209. All I need to do is remember not to walk in front of it. Mark Wilson, Features Editor I LOST A CODING CONTEST TO A 7-YEAR-OLD The wooden block you see below is Cubetto, a cute little robot that can teach your children to code. You position some plastic instruction pieces, press ‘go’,…

#26 BLUETOOTH MESH Tom Wiggins Bluetooth’s come a long way since we ‘Bluejacked’ rude messages to people on trains and pompous businessmen used it to shout things into their Jawbone headsets. But it’s still very much a one-to-one deal: your phone to your Fitbit, your mouse to your laptop, your iPad to your headphones. There’s power in numbers, though, and Bluetooth devices will soon be teaming up to do far more than you ever thought possible. It’s called Bluetooth Mesh and it works by connecting multiple gadgets together, like the way a Sonos system or Sky Q works but over Bluetooth rather than Wi-Fi. That means the data speeds are significantly slower – a relatively snail-like 1Mbps – but the uses of this tech are somewhat different. Imagine every appliance…

THE POP-UP ‘ACOUSTIC LENSES’ ALLOW YOU TO CHANGE THE SOUND DISPERSION £22,930 / bang-olufsen.com I hope that doesn’t sound as flaky as it looks. Very good. But those brown fins are actually called lamellas, from the Latin for flake. So what you mean is, “I hope that doesn’t sound as lamella-y as it looks.” Which doesn’t quite work. Anyway, do you know what else is Latin? The word ‘audio’, which means ‘I hear’. And once you’ve audio’d a pair of BeoLab 50s, you won’t doubt the sturdiness of their sound. A pair? Where’s the other one? These are active speakers, which means they don’t need external amplification to make any noise – all the tech is packed inside one speaker, while the other completes the stereo picture. All you need…

NEXT ISSUE November The iPhone edition On sale 05/10/17 4th MAIL RAIL AT THE POSTAL MUSEUM Closed, abandoned and forgotten nearly 100 years ago, the Post Office’s underground railway runs deep below the streets of London. And now you can take a 20-minute ride through the tunnels and largely untouched platforms on its miniature trains. 6th DESTINY 2 With a greater focus on story and less on eradicating wave after wave of endless bullet fodder, Destiny 2 will also open up more of the galaxy for exploration. That should be enough to distract you from the fact that none of your progress from the first game will carry over. 727 The number of days a player named ‘Policemam’ has spent playing the first Destiny. 24th BALTIMORE RAVENS vs JACKSONVILLE JAGUARS (NFL) If you…

5 XBOX 360 FACTS YOU DIDN’T KNOW • The 360 was first codenamed Trinity, in a reference to The Matrix. • It’s been estimated that the 360’s defect rate was 33%. • Microsoft spent over a billion dollars in shipping and repairing broken consoles over the 360’s lifespan. • Its processor was partly based on a Sony-funded chip for the PlayStation • The Kinect motion camera sold 8 million units in its first 60 days on sale. RIP. THE RIVAL Nintendo Wii “Forget about snazzy graphics,” said Nintendo. “Our console has motioncontrolled bowling.” THE CONSOLE Microsoft Xbox 360 2005 What is it about genius consoles with fatal character flaws? Yep, it’s impossible to chat about the Xbox 360 without mentioning the whole ‘red ring of death’ palaver. Still, it’s easy to forget that…

5 GAME BOY FACTS YOU DIDN’T KNOW • The Game Boy was the first game system to be played in space. • Believe it or not, that little green display ran at 60fps. • A Game Boy once survived a Gulf War explosion and still functions to this day. • With 118 million units sold worldwide, the Game Boy is the third-highest-selling game system ever. • The Game Boy is more power ful than any of the tech used to get Neil Armstrong on the Moon. THE RIVAL Apple iPhone Apple changed the humble mobile phone from a simple texter to a bona fide gaming machine. THE CONSOLE Game Boy 1989 Nintendo has always been the real maestro of game-based innovation, but perhaps its crowning achievement was squashing a whole video-game system into…

THE RIVALS Nintendo Switch With its portable magic and Nintendo gems, the Switch provides oodles of fun for any gamer. THE RIVALS Xbox One S Home to the Master Chief and a 4K Blu-ray player, the Xbox One S is a wor thy competitor. THE CONSOLE Sony PlayStation 4 Pro 2016 Think of all the features that epitomise modern gaming, and the PS4 Pro has them. 4K visuals? Check. VR compatibility? Yup. Fantastic exclusives and a solid online infrastructure? Absolutely. Not only is it currently the most powerful console in stores – until the Xbox One X arrives at least – but it also offers a sneak peek into the future of gaming. And with the PS4 claiming the UK’s title of fastest-selling console at launch, it’s frightening to think…

THE BASICS Make a scene Philips Hue ‘scenes’ are presets for its colour bulbs. The app has some built-in options but you can create your own. Tap on one of your rooms, press ‘Scenes’, then tap the ‘+’ icon in the bottom right corner. Choose ‘Picture scene’ and you’ll get the option of choosing a photo from your camera roll to recreate a mood from a cherished memory. Scrap the schedules To get your lights in tune with your movements, go to ‘Routines’, then ‘Home & Away’, then press the ‘Location aware’ switch. Now you can decide which lights go on when you’re coming home or leaving, and if they should only come on after sunset. Rise and shine You can time your bedroom Hue lights to slowly wake you…

HOT BUY 1 Samsung Galaxy S8 £689 / samsung.com You don’t need us to tell you that the Galaxy S8 is a bezel-less thing of wonder. Just look at it: glorious! And beneath that gorgeous facade lies an equally sumptuous blend of power and performance. With enough oomph to run any app you please, and a point-and-shoot camera to rival both the iPhone 7 Plus and the Google Pixel, this really is an astoundingly good comeback after Samsung’s Note 7 woes. We’d have accepted nothing less. Stuff says It’s beautiful… and it’s hands-down the best phone you can buy right now NOW ADD THIS DeX Station Hook up a monitor, keyboard and mouse to this puck-sized device for an almost complete computer experience via your Galaxy S8. £130 / samsung.com…

Should I upgrade? SURFACE PRO Rob Leedham Editor I’m starting to think that Microsoft has the counting skills of a pre-schooler. It called its third gaming console the Xbox One, then skipped the number nine altogether when announcing Windows 10. And when it came to naming its successor to the Surface Pro 4, it clearly did a wobbly and went all the way back to zero. But despite the Surface Pro’s lack of a number, this is most definitely a sequel to the Pro 4, what with its new Kaby Lake processor, improved battery life and revamped Surface Pen. Look below the Surface… One mystery remains, then: how does such a huge company struggle to count up to five? Perhaps there’s another reason why the Surface Pro is numberless: Microsoft…

HOT BUY HTC Vive £759 / vive.com The HTC Vive offers the most complete package of the current virtual reality headsets. While it will whet the appetite of gamers (see left), it offers much more than just blasting zombies. From interactive documentaries to helping you design your kitchen, this headset is a multi-talented piece of tech. The Vive will set you back a lot – for the headset itself, and also for the required supercomputer – but its room-tracking capabilities make this the most immersive VR experience so far. Stuff says It might be expensive, but the Vive provides the most engaging VR experience with its room-tracking magic Oculus Rift £477 / oculus.com The Oculus Rift offers a fun VR experience, but thanks to its lack of room tracking it…

HOT BUY Nest 3.0 £279 with installation / nest.com The Nest 3.0 is not a dramatic reinvention, but it didn’t need to be: this is still the best-looking and most rewarding smart thermostat on the market. Impressively, and slightly scarily, Nest learns your habits – when you’re in the house, when you’re likely to need a lot of hot water and so on – so it can control the boiler to save energy and keep that shower nice and toasty. That, paired with a nicely designed app, is enough to put the third-gen Nest ahead of its competition. Stuff says Our favourite thermostat cranks up the heat up on its smart home rivals with a solid upgrade Netatmo Welcome £154 / netatmo.com Netatmo’s smartcam has face recognition capability, which works…

HOT BUY Raspberry Pi Zero W from £9.60 / raspberrypi.org It might be nearly twice the price of the original Pi Zero, but when you’re still getting change from a tenner, the wireless Pi is fantastic value. Simplicity is the key word, with no need to mess about with dongles, adaptors and USB hubs. This also means that your Pi projects can be squeezed into much smaller places. If you’re looking for more advanced stuff, you’re better off with the Pi 3; but for value and simplicity, the Pi Zero W tops our chart. Stuff says The Pi Zero was already fantastic; wireless add-ons make it even better NOW ADD THIS Raspberry Pi Camera Module V2 Not every Pi project has to be a homage to your childhood console. This…

1 Kaspar £19.99 / iPad One synth not enough to express your songwriting genius? How about eight – playing at the same time? That’s Kaspar, an iPad noisemaker where hitting one key is enough to make a chart-topper. 2 Motion Stills £free / Android On iOS, Motion Stills made Live Photos useful. On Android, there are no Live Photos… so the app requires you shoot using its camera. But it’s fab for turning animated snaps into mini-movies. 3 WorkOutDoors £2.99 / Apple Watch Exercise is all very well until you take a wrong turn and end up in a canal. Unlike other Apple Watch fare, WorkOutDoors sensibly displays an auto-rotating map alongside your workout statistics. 4 Songbirds £1.99 / iOS This one’s for scratching that Electroplankton itch – using your…

KICKSTARTER Snoozeflash SANDMAN DOPPLER We’ve all woken up bleary-eyed, messy-haired and entirely unsure where we are or what we’re supposed to be doing. “What day is it?” you mumble to nobody in particular, and your stupid old alarm clock blinks back at you silently. Not so with Sandman’s Alexa-infused Doppler slumberbuster. As well as asking it the time, you can use pretty much all the usual Alexa skills, including turning off the lights as soon as you’re tucked up in bed so you don’t have to risk a bump in the night. And with six USB ports built in, it’ll also charge your phone, your smartwatch and anything else you’ve got laying about. US$119 / paloaltoinnovation.com INDIEGOGO Bean ’n’ gone HUSKEECUP Forget that cardboard coffee cup with somebody else’s name…

5 DREAMCAST FACTS YOU DIDN’T KNOW • Sega’s GD-ROM discs were proprietary, and you’d get a warning message if you stuck one in a CD player. • Microsoft made an operating system for Dreamcast games. • The combined capacity of every Dreamcast sold is 1TB. • Crack open a Sega’s VMU memory card and the word ‘potato’ is written on its chip. • The last Dreamcast game, Puyo Pop Fever, was released three years after the console was discontinued. THE RIVAL PlayStation 2 No one contributed to Sega’s demise more than Sega itself, but Sony’s PlayStation 2 cer tainly didn’t help. THE CONSOLE Sega Dreamcast 1998 The very definition of a glorious failure, Sega’s final console tried its hand at home, portable and online gaming… and still tanked as hard as the North…

THE RIVAL Alienware Steam Machine It’s no real threat to a proper gaming PC, but it does offer access to Steam. 5 PC GAMING FACTS YOU DIDN’T KNOW • The famous TI-83 calculator (1996) was more powerful than the Commodore 64 PC (1982). • There are now as many Steam users in the world as there are people in Japan. • Dota 2 was the first game to have a million simultaneous players. • Steam was launched by Valve in 2002 after Microsoft rejected the idea. • One of the first PC mods replaced all the Nazis with Smur fs in Castle Wolfenstein. THE GAMING PC StormForce Geo 2017 PC gaming is all about having the optimum video-game experience. There’s no settling for shoddy graphics, snail-slow processors and tiny gamepads. That’s especially true…

FOR FASHION ICONS The pocket monster Fendi Horizontal Plain leather wallets may be as stylish as sharp-suited business analysts, but they both get rather tiresome after a while. This Fendi, on the other hand, has a pair of leering monster eyes stitched into the calfskin, as well as a red leather interior lining for a more eccentric style. £290 / fendi.com The posh punk Valentino Garavani Rockstud Just like any upper-class rocker, this Valentino Garavani bi-fold decided to state its individualism by getting a pair of studs. But there’s no hiding its pedigree with pure leather construction and spacious room for wads of banknotes. Still, we’re sure it’d fit in fine at Download Festival. £220 / harrods.com The trouser snake Aspinal of London Snakeskin There’s something sinister about this wallet.…

£649 / stuff.tv/GalaxyBook ■ You can see what Samsung’s doing here: the Galaxy Book is a 2-in-1 Windows 10 machine that improves on the old TabPro S and, unlike that flawed predecessor, is cheap enough to undercut the Microsoft Surface Pro. ■ The new Book comes in two flavours: this bite-size 10.6in tab, and a full-fat 12in version that costs a whopping £450 more. Both are metal-bodied, glass-fronted slates with keyboard covers that turn them into work-ready laptops. ■ It’s hard not to feel a little sorry when you stick the 10.6in Galaxy Book side by side with the more premium 12in version. That model has a 2160x1440 AMOLED display, which even plays nicely with HDR video, but here you’re stuck with a 1920x1280 TFT panel. ■ This entry-level hybrid…

ROD WHITE ON OLED AND AMBILIGHT “Both the Philips 901F and 9002 are based on the same sub-5mm thickness of display. Because of the bezel reduction, it’s a truly immersive experience: a seamless spread of light from the set on to the wall behind. The picture quality from the OLED panel works in perfect harmony.” “We need to start wide. we should be dreaming, with one foot on the ground.” For Rod White, that’s the right way to begin conceptualising the look and feel of any new Philips TV. He heads up the team responsible for the complete industrial design process, distilling the trends they sniff out at home design and fashion shows into tropes that they can then apply to the traditional TV template – or use to change…

FLIC BUTTONS Stick these teeny Bluetooth buttons wherever you like, then use the app to assign different functions for a tap, double tap and long press. These can be simple controls like a ‘reading’ mode for your bedroom lights or a kid’s favourite Hue scene. from £30 / flic.io PHILIPS HUE MOTION SENSOR This sensor can detect movement from up to five metres away, and will automatically turn your lights off after a set period. You can also set it to only work at certain times, such as evenings, so the cat doesn’t keep setting it off in daylight. £35 / philips.co.uk LOGITECH HARMONY HUB Logitech’s Hub makes all your smart kit work in unison. You could set up a ‘gaming’ activity that turns on your TV, boots up your…

Don’t think of the Surface Studio as just another all-in-one PC. Think of it as a Surface Book that’s been through some kind of comic-book radiation beam and emerged Bigger! Stronger! Better! This is technically a desktop PC, but its wondrous 28in touchscreen can flip down on a clever hinge so you can use it flat like an illustrator’s tablet. Sit in front of one and you’ll be staring at a big screen that’s crazy-sharp. Text looks as though it’s been intricately etched into the glass with a surgeon’s scalpel. It’s fantastic, and the novelty will never wear off. Promise. You’re not buying the world’s most powerful desktop here, however – it’s using last year’s CPU – and it has an eye-watering price. Customise a 27in iMac to have similar…

HOT BUY Urbanista Seattle Wireless £89 / urbanista.com Urbanista makes affordable headphones that sell in the kind of high-street shops where you won’t usually find hardcore hi-finerds – so it’s a real surprise that the Seattles are some of the best-sounding affordable wireless cans around. They have a far more expansive and involving soundstage than most sub-£100 pairs – they’re full and rich-sounding, with the sort of tasteful bass drive that will please the masses without turning off the chin-stroking crowd. Stuff says Bags of style and fantastic sound quality at the right price – these Urbanistas are an absolute steal Beyerdynamic Byron £44 / europe.beyerdynamic.com These earphones have a sound we defy you not to like, with great mid-range detail that outdoes our long-term favourite SoundMagic E10Cs. They’re the…

NETFLIX Star Trek: Discovery (S1) Just as space is endless, so are the possibilities for milking the Star Trek franchise – not that sci-finerds will be upset about that. This new series is set a decade before the original adventures of Kirk and co. BoJack Horseman (S4) You’d think a show featuring brightly animated animals that act like humans would be a silly old hoot. But BoJack Horseman is as soul-squashing as it is funny. Who’d have thought we’d be so invested in a trouser-wearing horse? Okja You’ll never look at a pork chop the same way again after watching Okja, the tale of an adorable superpig that yanks at your heartstrings with the power of a sausage grinder. If anything will make you a vegetarian, it’s this. AMAZON VIDEO…