Table of contents for December 2018 in Stuff UK

How’s that phone contract coming along? Time for an upgrade? Feeling flush and reckon a SIM-free deal is in the offing? The good news is, things have royally kicked off in the mobile world with a selection of seriously smooth new smartphones vying for your hard-earned green queens. So Stuff got down to the business of dissecting the latest and greatest handsets from major players like Huawei, Google and Sony. The competition proved tighter than a Strictly dancer’s paso doble trousers – find out how it panned out on p38. But if you can’t see past a collection of iPhone clones and yearn for the simple life, check out the retro tech love-in on p74, where we’ve gone all dewy-eyed over classically designed mobile devices making a comeback. Games consoles,…

REEL THUNDER Zeiss ZX1 With motives as transparent as its famed lenses, Zeiss wants in on your Insta feed with its first full-frame camera, sporting a 35mm f/2 fixed lens and offering built-in Lightroom CC. Its 512GB of internal storage and hefty editing suites mean you can shoot, edit, and finally share pictures that’ll detail every paper-thin sheet of filo in your spanakopita. due early 2019 / zx1.zeiss.com HAPPY MEDIUM Fujifilm GFX 50R Objectively it’s big… but then for a medium-format camera with the innards of one of those hulking studio models the GFX 50R is positively modest in size. At 775g this is no Quaver or Wotsit, but considering that 51.4MP sensor inside, which is bound to be as stunning as Fujifilm’s usual stellar fare, it’s floaty-light. How it’ll…

£free / iOS When Apple bought up Workflow, iOS’s best automation app, people feared the worst… until Apple’s own Shortcuts app appeared at WWDC, bearing more than a passing resemblance. Workflow has basically been consumed, Borglike, by Shortcuts, which sits on the App Store hoping people will still love it. And they really should, because this app finally makes Siri useful. Rather than having the AI gradually learn new tricks, Shortcuts brute-forces its powers. You create workflows via drag-and-drop (or just download them) and define commands to trigger them. Sounds easy? It really is!…

Fender Play £free / iOS, Android, desktop Everyone fancies themselves as the next Albert/Freddie/BB King at some point, but there comes a stage when you feel like you might have left it too late. Well, Fender says you haven’t. Whether you’re a raw-fingered novice or a lapsed maestro scrambling back into the saddle, the Fender Play app is here to hone your strumming skills. Choose your weapon – guitar, bass or ukulele (you’ll have to provide it, mind) – and Fender Play will school you on how to play it using bite-size videos presented by friendly fretboard wizards. This free app works on desktop, iOS and Android, and promises to teach you your first recognisable riff in just 22 minutes.…

We’ve always liked Apple Watches, but the comparatively high price, restrictive screen size and general lack of functionality made them feel less than essential. With Series 4, Apple has made many improvements to the design, while adding a few features that set it apart from the competition. As a result, the latest Watch changes everything: it is, by quite some distance, the best wearable on the market. The physical redesign extends to a larger display, a thinner form factor and new faces that display much more information than before. We’d still love to see better battery life, but the Watch now feels much more useful as you navigate your day with more detailed weather, health and calendar information. There are some serious feature improvements as well, including a bigger internal…

The retro revivalist Smeg KLF04 If you’re a fan of the post-war retro aesthetic, Smeg’s latest ’50s-inspired kettle will be a brew-tiful edition to your kitchen. With seven temperature settings, an LED display and a ‘keep warm’ feature, it blends the nostalgic appeal of Back to the Future with the futuristic smarts of, um, Back to the Future. And if the look of this kettle is enough to bring your heart to boiling point, just wait till you see the array of tasty colour options. £160 / smeguk.com BEAUTEOUS BOILERS The quirky cuppa De’Longhi Avvolta Who says you can’t have a transcendental moment of art appreciation while you wait for the kettle to boil? With its dramatic ‘vortex’ design, this is one eye-catching piece to add some design flair to…

£50 / stuff.tv/E11C ■ Headphone sockets might be a rare sight on phones in 2018, but if yours has one it’s begging you to introduce it to some decent headphones. SoundMagic’s E10, E10C and wireless E10BT in-ears have been close to the top of our list of affordable in-ears for years, and now come the E11Cs. ■ These have a more premium look than their predecessors, opting for a single silver/grey finish rather than the assorted colours of the E10 range. The aluminium buds look and feel better-made as well. ■ They’re super-light and incredibly comfortable, forming a nice tight seal to ensure your tunes sound exactly as they should while not letting too much exterior racket creep in. ■ Just down the cable from the left bud is a…

MICROSOFT TO-DO You might get a sense of deja vu using To-Do, and that’s because Microsoft intended it to replace Wunderlist. Right now, though, it’s a rather minimal app, lacking key features. Still, not a bad choice if you want something simple. £free / Android, iOS, web HABITCA Although you always get that satisfying little buzz in your brain when you check a task off a list, that might not be enough. Should you need extra encouragement to actually get things done, Habitca turns your to-dos into a tiny role-playing game. £free / Android, iOS, web THINGS One for the serious Get Things Done wonks – at least if armed with Apple kit. This task manager has a ton of great features for organising your life, and a lickable interface…

Sonic by Robert Oxley It’s a testament to artist Robert Oxley’s skill that he can let paint dribble down a canvas and give off this incredible ‘melted waxwork’ reimagining of Sonic the Hedgehog. Created in collaboration with Sega to celebrate the character’s 25th anniversary, an original limited-edition boxed canvas of ‘Sonic’ or ‘Speed of Sound’ (left) can be bought direct from the artist. from £850 / oxleyart.co.uk Mike Wrobel 8090s Thrones Mike Wrobel is a Japan-based artist with a penchant for slipping Games of Thrones characters into ’80 and ’90s clothing. White Walkers, Missandei, Jon Snow, Littlefinger and Olenna Tyrell are among those given the treatment, the latter depicted in a shellsuit sporting a dookie gold chain. Other incarnations include Conan the Barbarian, Axel Foley and Mulder & Scully. from…

50 YEARS OF ROLLING STONE From vivid live shots to elaborate Annie Leibowitz portraits, this chunky book includes some of the finest rock photography ever. £30 / amazon.co.uk HIGH TIDE: A SURF ODYSSEY Stoke your wanderlust with this compendium of stunning coastal photography from modern maestro Chris Burkard. £35 / abebooks.co.uk MOTHER Enlightening and poignant, Matthew Finn’s beautiful portraits follow his mother’s life from middle age to the onset of dementia. Proof of the power of the photograph. £30 / waterstones.com…

Sony WH-1000XM3 £330 / stuff.tv/SonyXM3 Sony’s WH-1000 series was already a top performer, and the WH-1000XM3s make for an even more compelling package. With Bluetooth wireless and great noise-cancellation, they’re the ultimate public transport stress killer… well, aside from a chauffeur or a lottery win that lets you retire. The leather pads make them incredibly easy to wear, not unlike sitting in one of those ultra-comfy leather chairs, and most importantly of all the sound quality is fantastic. Stuff says Great wireless headphones with effective ANC and a sound that nails just about everything Urbanista Seattle Wireless £89/ stuff.tv/SeattleWireless The Seattles are some of the best-sounding affordable wireless cans around. They’re full and rich-sounding, with the sort of tasteful bass drive that will please the masses without turning off the…

Sonos Beam £399 / stuff.tv/SonosBeam Sonos’s home cinema gear has always been a little expensive, but with the Beam it’s created a great-value soundbar. It sounds ace, comes with loads of features and is compact enough to fit into the average living-room AV setup without taking over. If you want the best-sounding system then the Playbar or Playbase are still the products to go for, but they’re a lot more money, they don’t have Alexa, and they don’t control your TV in the same slick way the Beam does. Stuff says Smaller and cheaper than the already excellent Playbar, and packed full of smarts Q Acoustics Media 4 £199 / stuff.tv/Media4 The justifiably multi-award-winning Media 4 combines subtle detail with precise surround effects to be one of the best-sounding and…

Sony PlayStation 4 Pro £349 / 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 Nintendo Switch £280 / stuff.tv/NintendoSwitch Nintendo’s console earned a promotion in our list after it impressed…

Jaguar I-Pace from £58,995 / stuff.tv/ipace Not content with simply making an electric vehicle that can get you from A to B with minimal fuss (and fuel bills), Jaguar has created something desirable, fun to drive and impressively capable when the going gets tough. This car offers Amazon Alexa intergration, smartphone connectivity and a 10in touchscreen on the upper deck. With the I-Pace, Jaguar can happily claim to be the first mainstream brand to really give Tesla something to worry about. Stuff says Fun, fast and practical, the I-Pace is the greatest thing to happen to electric cars in a long time Volvo XC90 T8 from £57,783 / stuff.tv/XC90T8 The latest XC90 is a monster 4x4 that features some of the most impressive interior tech seen on any car today,…

Tado Smart Thermostat from £199 + installation / stuff.tv/Tado It might not be as pretty as the Nest 3.0, but Tado has quietly evolved into the best all-round smart heating system around. Like autopilot for your boiler, it senses when you’re leaving home or coming back thanks to the app’s geolocation. And Tado’s gadgety goodness is second to none, with the option of zonal control for individual rooms and voice smarts from the likes Alexa and Google Assistant. Stuff says Tado roasts the competition with its combination of simplicity and smarts • TIPS & TRICKS • Check out the app’s Energy Savings Report to see how well you’re doing each month. • Crank up the nerdery by tinkering with Tado’s IFTTT channel or adding it to your HomeKit setup. •…

Fujifilm X-T20 £789 / stuff.tv/XT20 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 • TIPS & TRICKS • For aperture-priority shots, set shutter speed to auto and turn the lens ring to the desired f-number. • Pressing the Q button will open a custom menu, giving you quick access…

I LOST MY HEART TO A PHANTOM A few weeks ago, I found myself in a fancy hotel sat on a plush floral armchair, eyes closed, nodding my head slowly to an incredibly clear studio recording of some smooth jazz. Because that’s what audiophiles do. This was all to mark the arrival of a new sound baby: the Reactor, which is a miniaturised version of Devialet’s high-end Phantom. It’s beautiful and it’s premium and I left with watery eyes as the music touched my soul, and because £990 does not make it “accessible for all”. Natalya Paul, Online Editor I CONSIGNED MY 4K TELLY TO THE TECH DUSTBIN You know a TV is good when it makes you forget you’re in a penthouse apartment with spectacular real-world views over the…

PROJECT xCLOUD Forza Horizon 4, as you’ll find out later in this issue, is an astonishingly brilliant racing game. So good, in fact, that you might wish you could take it for a spin wherever you are. Enter Project xCloud, Microsoft’s in-the-works vision for the future that’ll let you stream games not only to your PC or console, but also to your tablet. The idea of streaming games from the cloud, rather than having them installed on a machine, is nothing new. It seems like yonks ago that OnLive introduced us to this idea, and Sony’s PlayStation Now service lets you stream old games to your PS4 or PC right now. But with the ambitious Project xCloud (we’re hoping that’s a working title), Microsoft is promising the freedom to play…

MEGA NEWS The Sega Mega Drive is back. And the Sega Master System. And the Mega CD, Game Gear, Mark III, Sega MyCard, and… well, you get the picture. It’s all thanks to the Analogue Mega Sg, a gorgeous unofficial console that can play nearly all of the classic Sega cartridges you have stashed away somewhere – in shiny 1080p. ROBOT WARS When we first met Anki Vector, the clever little robot that gives you weather reports and throws a strop if you beat it at cards, we dubbed it an Amazon Echo rival. As good as that fight would be to watch, it’s probably a better outcome that the two will be merging as the robot gets on-board Alexa powers. EASIER LISTENING Spotify knows you’re handing over the value…

13th HITMAN 2 Agent 47 is back for the follow-up to 2016’s brilliant soft reboot of the Hitman series. Hitman 2 eschews the previous game’s episodic format, instead giving you six missions from the off… and there’s a pink bird costume to do killing in. 14th FALLOUT 76 With Fallout 76, Bethesda is looking to shake up its post-apocalyptic RPG series by making the game entirely online, which means that every character you meet on your radiation-threatened travels will be controlled by a real human. 14th BANG & OLUFSEN BEOSOUND EDGE Looking to make a big ol’ dent in your bank balance this month? You could do a lot worse than B&O’s thumpingly loud Beosound Edge speaker. It looks a bit like a pound coin for giants, is wall-mountable (you…

Canon EOS R What’s the story? Canon’s entry to the full-frame mirrorless market has been met with a slightly mixed reaction from the internet’s chattering classes. Probably aimed more towards mid-range shooters than either beginners or experienced pros, the EOS R looks a lot like one of Canon’s smaller DSLRs, with a superb electronic viewfinder and a fully articulating touchscreen. Is it any good? Shooting in extremely low light is a doddle thanks to a hyper-sensitive focusing system, while image quality is just as good as you’d expect from the king of cameras – think super-sharp details and gorgeous colours. The bad news is that there’s only a single SD card slot, while battery life is officially rated at an unimpressive 370 shots. There are some great features that are…

Nokia 8110 Back in 1999, when the Millennium Dome was called the Millennium Dome, there was nothing cooler than Nokia’s 8110 slider phone. Sure, it was like making calls on a banana, but Keanu Reeves had one in the The Matrix so we all wanted one. Nokia’s rebooted version has a colour display and 4G connectivity for app downloads and mobile web browsing – ideas considered witchcraft at the turn of the century. There’s a new version of Snake to tackle, and if yellow isn’t your colour it also comes in a more sedate black finish. £69 / nokia.com Punkt MP02 Launched at the London Design Festival, the second iteration of the Punkt mindful mobile is a minimalist’s dream, with leanings towards Braun’s iconic designs of the 1980s. What do…

FIRST ADD THESE… ONE AF-S NIKKOR 70-200MM F/2.8E FL ED VR LENS Nikon’s ultra-fast and super-sharp telephoto zoom lens has been tweaked for better AF and vibration reduction, while new lens elements make it lighter and tougher than ever. It might still be a big hunk of glass to lug around, but it captures the action like a true pro. £2549 / jessops.com TWO METZ 64 AF-1 FLASHGUN Photography really comes to life when you master the art of light – and because of the professional nature of the D5, there’s no built-in flash (well, they tend to be a bit useless anyway). So it pays to invest in a mighty digital flashgun… and the Metz 64 AF-1 is one of the most powerful and versatile on the market. £309…

Data Wing £free / Android, iOS This game starts off as if Asteroids had a baby with a top-down racer: your triangular craft blasts around circuits, gaining speed when its bum scrapes neon track edges. Soon you discover you’re part of an OS ruled by a deranged AI. Story and game quickly expand, as you glimpse the world beyond the screen and battle gravity in cavern-based sections that recall 8-bit classic Thrust. Rarely do mobile titles pack in so many hours of clever, thoughtful narrative. Pretty much never are such games free. Stuff says A mobile game we’d happily recommend if it cost a fiver – for nowt, it’s an absurdly generous bargain Euclidean Lands £3.99 / iOS This one smashes Monument Valley’s minimal isometric views into Hitman Go’s turn-based…

Apple Watch Series 4 from £399 / stuff.tv/WatchS4 The Apple Watch Series 4 has everything going for it – the larger screen, improved processor and louder speaker mean it’s easier to actually do stuff on it than any previous Watch, and it has a load of health features that just aren’t on other wearables. Whether you’re navigating somewhere using Maps, going for a run without your phone, or just wanting to keep track of your activity during the day, this Apple Watch does a great job of handling all these things and more. Stuff says Best wearable ever: a sleek, sophisticated redesign of the previous generation with some hearty upgrades Samsung Galaxy Watch from £279 / stuff.tv/GalaxyWatch A sturdy and stylish smartwatch with plenty of power and a truly lovely…

Sonos One £199 / stuff.tv/SonosOne Making an amazing speaker was an easy job for the multiroom champs, but getting Amazon’s Alexa voice assistant to dance along in time with it… well, that wasn’t such a simple task. But the One is now an altogether more well-rounded device than it was at launch, supporting Spotify with voice control as well as Amazon Music and TuneIn Radio, while the early Alexa hiccups seem to have been fixed by a series of software updates. The only issue? It’s a little hard of hearing compared to Amazon’s Echo. Stuff says Sonos’s Alexa-powered speaker remains a class apart from the competition Amazon Echo Dot £40 / stuff.tv/EchoDot The massive price difference means that, for many people, this is a much better bet than the full-size…

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 HTC Vive £499 / stuff.tv/HTCVive Barring a £100 price difference, there isn’t much difference between the HTC Vice and…

Oculus Quest? Sounds like a cancelled Channel 4 game show. Maybe, but no. Oculus Quest represents Facebook’s biggest shake-up of virtual reality since, well, the Oculus Go. While that headset introduced us to wireless, faff-free VR that doesn’t require a smartphone or crazy-powerful PC in tandem, Oculus Quest has Zuckerberg and co taking the idea a step further. It’s still entirely standalone, but now you have six-degrees-of-freedom movement tracking, so you can stand up and move inside the virtual space. So it’s better for gaming, then? Much. Oculus Go was a perfectly decent entry-level VR headset, but it was a bit too restrictive to be seen as an on-the-go gaming device. By contrast, Quest is being pitched as a gaming system… and while we can’t promise you won’t look like…

1 A Way To Slay £free / Android, iOS The good news: you’re surrounded by bad guys with swords, but they don’t move until you do, so you can pick them off at will. The bad news: get the order in which you slash them up wrong and you’re dead. 2 Firefox Reality Browser £free / Daydream When you think 3D VR excitement, browsing the internet probably isn’t top of your list. Still, if you want to do so with your Daydream on, Mozilla’s app provides access to 3D content. 3 Niagara Launcher £free / Android This launcher helps you blaze through hundreds of installed apps by having you navigate them like artists in a music app. It’s fast, turns the letters into a nice wibbly line and has a…

KICKSTARTER Incy wincy speaker GRAVASTAR Speakers have become a creativity playground for adventurous hardware manufacturers. We’ve seen speakers as tyres, gramophones, and even HAL 9000. But Gravastar is the most arresting design yet, resembling a metal spider robot preparing to laser your face off. Fortunately, this thing is more interested in sending music to your ears than removing them. Its shock-absorbent zinc alloy shell houses a 15W speaker, and two Gravastars can be paired for stereo output. The tweeter/subwoofer separation is claimed to provide “crystal-clear distortion-free sound”. $129 / zoeao.com INDIEGOGO Bag o’ light PIX Personalising backpacks with stickers is so pre-millennial. Pix gives you a 16-by-20 matrix of giant pixels instead. It’s all controlled by an app, enabling you to showcase your low-res art skills or play the most…

from £80 / stuff.tv/FireHD8 ■ Amazon has long offered tablets with solid build quality for bargain prices. This 2018 evolution of the Fire HD 8 has all the expected upgrades, including a beefier processor, but the headline news is a new optional dock/case that lets your tablet sit upright. So you can watch videos and get visual answers to your queries using Alexa, all hands-free. ■ As soon as you fire it up (excuse the pun), you know this is an Amazon device… but not in a good way. During the setup, it tries to flog you a subscription to Amazon Prime. Then there are the adverts on the lockscreen – and the OS, a heavily skinned version of Android whose apps are skewed in favour of Amazon’s own. ■…

THE BASICS ■ Make some lists If you only want a bare-bones to-do manager – or if you burn through tasks at a pace that makes normal people hate you – you can probably stick with Wunderlist’s Inbox. But if you want to organise your tasks, create some lists. You can refine your setup further by dragging one list onto another to group them in a folder. Wunderlist will also make smart lists based on due dates and starred items. ■ Add tasks Tap the blue ‘+’ button and Wunderlist creates a new task. The app understands natural language input for schedules and notifications, such as ‘Buy Stuff tomorrow at 6pm’. To manually assign dates and reminders, use the calendar button (and clock on iOS). By default, new items head…

1 FIND PICTURES FAST Forget relentlessly tapping a button or scrolling via a jog-wheel, because Nikon’s flagship D5 features an intuitive touchscreen display that makes locating pictures much easier. Simply swipe left or right to quickly scan through snaps, and double-tap the screen to zoom and check the focus point. There’s even a simple pinch-to-zoom function so you can zone in on the finer details. 2 KILL THE BAD VIBES Vibration reduction (VR) has historically helped photographers achieve ultra-sharp imagery even when the camera is handheld. Unfortunately, VR can also play havoc with fast-moving objects, which is where Sport mode comes in handy. Only available on certain lenses, it makes subjects easier to track during panning and enables high-speed burst shooting mounted to the D5. 3 LIGHTEN UP Dive into…

£230 / stuff.tv/sleepbuds NIGHT 01 Born out of an immediately successful crowdfunding campaign, the Bose Sleepbuds are like no earplugs you’ve seen before. Rather than employing the noise-cancelling tech used in its headphones, Bose’s totally wireless buds mask the sounds that routinely interrupt your all-important shut-eye (rutting foxes, car horns, your better half’s incessant snoring) with soothing loops engineered to keep you in the land of nod. And that’s pretty much all they do. Given the decidedly eye-opening price tag, the question is: are the Sleepbuds so good at it that sufferers of troubled sleep should buy a pair? You can’t use the Sleepbuds to play music or track the quality of your sleep, and you can’t design your own sounds To use the Sleepbuds you first need to download…

Huawei Mate 20 Pro £899 / stuff.tv/Mate20Pro Huawei bumps its own magnificent P20 Pro off the top spot with another flagship phone that’s left Apple and Samsung scrabbling to catch up. The Mate 20 Pro brings back the triple-lens camera of the P20 Pro, only now it’s got a 20MP ultra-wide-angle camera with a new version of its predecessor’s AI-assisted night mode. It’s the most tech-packed phone in the world, yet battery life is a match for any of its rivals. No contest. Stuff says A stunning smartphone that makes the competition look lazy in comparison • TIPS & TRICKS • The phone itself doubles as a wireless charger, so you can share juice with any Qi-enabled device. • An AI-assisted video trick lets you create colour portraits with black…

Beyerdynamic Byron £44 / stuff.tv/Byron A strong argument for the idea that you don’t really need to spend more than £50 on earphones, the Byrons have a sound we defy you not to like. They’re not like the company’s studio headphones, designed for sound engineers looking for extreme accuracy – they’re for everyday folk – but these humble-looking buds do come with a shot of that special Beyer sauce. They’re some of the truest-sounding in-ears we’ve heard, with great midrange detail and good punch to the bass. Stuff says Seriously classy in-ear headphones with the detail to outdo the competition Sony WF-1000X £131 / stuff.tv/SonyWF Impressive levels of detail and clarity, a decent amount of bass weight to the mix, and active noise-cancelling that works as well as you can…

Moov Now £45 / stuff.tv/MoovNow Slow and steady wins the race, and the Now has gone on to prove that with a marathon-like pace helping it finally make it to the top of this list. We’ve long considered this tracker a bargain, but further reductions have helped it enter the realm of ‘downright steal’. OK, so it doesn’t have a screen or smartphone skills, but with guided voice coaching, a six-month battery and solid waterproofing, it has everything you’d ever want in your perfect fitness tracker. Stuff says A bargain-tastic fitness band that does more than just track your steps Fitbit Alta HR £130 / stuff.tv/AltaHR The Alta HR is one of the most motivational health monitors around. The heart-rate tracking adds some insightful meat to your stats, and it…

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 Amazon Fire TV Stick £40 / stuff.tv/FireStick With fast, reliable…

Lego Boost Creative Toolbox £150 / stuff.tv/LegoCreativeToolbox Building Lego models is already ridiculously good fun, so think what great a time you’ll have when the completed model turns into a functioning robot. With the accompanying tablet app, you can use simple coding to make the robot move, fire projectiles and play various games. And rather than retiring it to the dusty shelf once you’re bored, you can rebuild him into four other programmable models: a harmonica-playing cat, a driveable rover, a working robot-builder and a playable guitar. Stuff says All hail Vernie and friends – for value and sheer fun, it’s hard to beat this programmable Lego kit Sphero BB-8 with Force Band £130 / stuff.tv/BB8 BB-8 was fun even without the Force Band. Now it will make you feel…

Superhot VR £14.99 / Oculus Rift, Vive, PSVR Superhot has found its home in VR – just watch those slow-mo bullets skim the tip of your nose. The enemy will only move when you do, so time your attacks to perfection and dodge, duck and dive to survive. There’s something really cool about hiding behind a desk before blitzing your opponents with streams of bullets as if you were starring in your very own Matrix movie. And with Superhot soon arriving on PSVR, more players will be able to experience this wonderfully action-packed title. Stuff says If you have a VR headset, this 2-in-1 puzzler and shooter should be right at the top of your shopping list Farpoint £25 (£65 with Aim Controller) / PSVR If it weren’t in VR,…

Sony DSC-RX100 V £872 / stuff.tv/RX100V We wouldn’t recommend buying this camera if you already own the old IV model, but a few improvements have ensured Sony remains the top dog in our compacts list – and we’re keeping this model above the new RX100 VI simply because of the huge price difference. It remains one of the finest point-and-shoots we’ve ever seen, with a flexibility that few pocket cameras can muster. While it’s still not exactly cheap, we reckon this is the cam to buy if you want fantastic-looking snaps from your holidays. Stuff says A small improvement over the RX100 IV, but this Sony is close to premium point-and-shoot perfection Panasonic Lumix TZ200 £729 / stuff.tv/TZ200 This Panasonic compact is a significant upgrade from the TZ100, offering extra…

SNES Classic Mini £80 / stuff.tv/ClassicMini Why bother splashing out over £200 on a games console when you can get the SNES Classic Mini for a fraction of that? Especially when you get 21 classic titles pre-installed on this nostalgia-inducing machine, including the likes of Super Metroid, A Link to the Past, Super Mario World and the never-before-released Star Fox 2. And with two controllers bundled in the box, you’ll be able to start the Super Mario Kart action right away. Stuff says With 21 classic games installed, gamers won’t find better value anywhere • TIPS & TRICKS • Chickens killed you in Zelda again? You can rewind up to five minutes and pretend it never happened. • For full-fat nostalgia you can read the instruction manual for each of…