{"id":255361,"date":"2025-11-01T21:37:15","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T21:37:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/255361\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T21:37:15","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T21:37:15","slug":"the-best-luxury-gadgets-to-buy-now","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/255361\/","title":{"rendered":"The best luxury gadgets to buy now"},"content":{"rendered":"

There are some things in life that are tricky to figure out. For instance, where the dog has put our slippers. Or why children now know so much about gelato. Or how perfectly to set up a pool table in the shed. Thankfully, a handful of new gadgets are now available to help such middle-class conundrums. None of which will ultimately save the world. But they help with a midlife crisis.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s the elbows that always ruin it. I\u2019ve seen it happen to friends. You have a notion that you will bring some bachelor sophistication to your shed \u2014 a keg of beer, a sound system (playing music from your twenties, the best time for music) and, of course, a pool table. <\/p>\n

You overcome obstacles to achieve it, such as the insensitive derision of your wife, who uses words like \u201ctragic\u201d, \u201ccrisis\u201d, \u201cmidlife\u201d and \u201cat least you\u2019re not running after some popsy, I suppose\u201d. You set it up just so. Then you move around to pot a ball and your elbows hit the lawnmower. The cue bashes intransigently against the back wall. That is when you realise the truth. Not that your best days are behind you and you should embrace ageing with dignity. No. That your shed is too small, or your pool table is too big.<\/p>\n

This is where Cornilleau comes in. You will recognise the name from your French exchanges. These are the ping-pong tables of choice for those parched playgrounds populated solely by dying grass, rusting swings, barely hidden menace, mummified dog poo and surly teenagers with a 40-a-day Gitanes habit. Cornilleau now has a pool table and its key attribute is that \u2014 like those table tennis tables, and unlike the teenagers sitting smoking on them \u2014 it is happy outside. No longer need my arms bash against the walls. No longer need my yearning for lost vitality be confined to a shed. Here I can play the pool games of my youth unencumbered by the constraints of the B&Q shed range. <\/p>\n

And my wife\u2019s views? Well, the pool table converts tidily into an outdoor dining table. And if you go for the Play-Style Origin version, it\u2019s a pretty stylish one as well.<\/p>\n

Happy wife, happy midlife crisis. It\u2019s not often you can say that.
Details \u00a34,995, uk.cornilleau.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\"ThreeRokos wine decanter<\/p>\n

The Rokos decanter provokes many questions. Like, how do you hand-blow a glass jug with such precision that it can stand up on three different axes? What are the centre-of-gravity calculations for making glassware stable in multiple orientations, depending on how full it is? And, most of all, why bother?<\/p>\n

The proudly artisanal decanter is designed to be, if nothing else, a talking point. As you drink from it, you can move it into different positions \u2014 from upright to near flat. It gives you something to do while you drink, provides a metaphor for what happens when you drink and increases the aeration of whatever you are drinking. Do I need a decanter that goes more horizontal the more I drink, though? <\/p>\n

It sits on my dining table, pointing to the ceiling \u2014 ready for whatever the night might bring. It is in its \u201csober\u201d configuration, 13 degrees to the vertical. Is this useful, I ask as, three glasses down, like a reveller at a May Ball undoing his bow tie, it moves to its \u201ctipsy\u201d 60-degree configuration: louche, relaxed, reclined. Finally at 104 degrees, like that same May Ball reveller leaning groggily over an Oxford bridge at dawn and questioning his life choices, it is empty. Probably, I don\u2019t need a Rokos decanter. But then I don\u2019t need this much wine either. We are where we are.
Details \u00a3460, rokos.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\"AMagimix Gelato Expert ice-cream maker<\/p>\n

\u201cCan we have ice cream?\u201d asks child number one, for the fifth time. \u201cCan we have ice cream?\u201d asks child number three, for the fourth time, five minutes later. \u201cCan we\u2026\u201d begins child number two, walking into the study while I\u2019m literally saying no to his older brother. \u201cNo!\u201d I shout. It is hour two of the Magimix\u2019s existence in our house. It is still in its box. And I am already ready to destroy either it or a child.<\/p>\n

I remember, as a child, having choc ices. They were made from skimmed UHT milk, E numbers, yellow food colouring, and something brown and crispy that was not allowed under several EU regulations to call itself chocolate. And you know what? I was grateful for them.<\/p>\n

Not so my children. They like the luxury supermarket brands. They use the word \u201cgelato\u201d. And now they are looking forward \u2014 with relentless, inhuman persistence \u2014 to some homemade gelato.<\/p>\n

We begin with a sorbet. Or, more accurately \u2014 because apparently these things matter to modern primary-school children \u2014 a granita. How hard is it? I simply provide the lemon, zest and sugar water, and push the granita button. Half an hour later, voil\u00e0. <\/p>\n

It is sharp. It is sweet. It is just the right consistency. \u201cI think there is too much lemon rind,\u201d says child two with the thoughtful air of a connoisseur. I thank him for the criticism.<\/p>\n

We move on to ice cream. Sorry, gelato. This time my contribution is a little more complex, but not much more so. It involves egg whites, cream, shaved chocolate and persistent pestering from child number three. Again, I push the button and wait. <\/p>\n

We all eat it, we all thank child three for his chocolate-shaving assistance. We all approve, we all feel sophisticated. I believe, with relief, I have earned some respite from pestering. Then a voice comes round the study door. \u201cCan I have a\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n

It\u2019s time to return to school.
Details \u00a3500, magimix.it<\/a><\/p>\n

\"Rolled-upYogiFi smart yoga mat<\/p>\n

There are ways to cheat on my new yoga mat. The position of my bum feels less fixed, somewhat wibblier, than that of the lithe lady on the screen. When she engages the \u201cfoot-hand posture\u201d to touch the mat with her hands, she does so with straighter legs. It\u2019s a paradox, I muse, before almost toppling over. She\u2019s simultaneously a lot bendier than me and only bent in the right places. Still, she can\u2019t see my bent legs and judge me.<\/p>\n

But there are four points of contact with which I can\u2019t cheat. If my hands are in the wrong place, the yoga mat can tell through sensors and lets me know via lights on a panel. If my feet are in the right place, it praises me on the app (\u201cYou are a good equestrian,\u201d it says when my equestrian pose goes well). If, during the eight limbs pose, there aren\u2019t eight bits of me exactly where they need to be, it lets me know. Then, it coaches me until there are. <\/p>\n

Do I want a mat that judges me? No, of course I don\u2019t. But, then, I also don\u2019t want to hold the mountain pose for five seconds before switching to a plank (\u201cWork that core!\u201d). As an adult you find yourself having to do a lot of things you don\u2019t want to. That\u2019s the point of yoga. At least this way, before I end things with a meditation (it has to trust me to breathe all by myself), I know I\u2019m less likely to be wasting my time while doing it.
Details \u00a3129, yogifismart.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\"GarminGarmin Fenix 8 watch<\/p>\n

It is as if I have been able to quiz all the runners of Lausanne and, without ever having been to the city before, pool together their route recommendations. But crucially, I have done so without having to talk to the runners of Lausanne. No Lycra-clad earnestness or inevitable segue into energy gels has been employed in the production of this route plan. Instead, Garmin has simply provided me with a map of where people like to run in Lausanne, plotted a custom path to the length I require and then sent the details to my watch. <\/p>\n

Running is the best way to quickly get a feel of a new city. But running in a new city is also the best way to find yourself continually checking your phone, stuck in the middle of a six-lane overpass or, once in Kyiv, in a dark alley, surrounded by large men, wondering which of my fingers I would sacrifice first if it came to it.<\/p>\n

A kilometre into my Lausanne run, and it seems my watch will stop me getting lost and a lot more besides. I have pounded through the historic centre, padded past the cathedral and then traced a route through parks to the shore of the lake. There, I find the halfway point is helpfully located on a beach, and I cool off in the lake with a view of the Alps. <\/p>\n

Emerging from the water, I see the return route is, again, largely in parks \u2014 but different ones. I also see something else, something that might explain why the first half felt so easy. It was all downhill; the return is all up. And I realise that, effort-wise rather than distance-wise, my beach isn\u2019t halfway at all. Lausanne\u2019s runners know a good route. They are also, it turns out, an annoyingly hardy bunch. I should probably ask them about their energy gels.
Details \u00a3879.99, garmin.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\"IndoorAuk Mini herb garden<\/p>\n

A basil plant was the first living thing my wife and I were responsible for. It was not a good omen. We came to call him Jesus, because of his ability to return from the dead. We knew the principles: put Jesus somewhere sunny, water him every week, snip off a communion wafer\u2019s worth of leaves every now and then for a caprese salad. It was the practice that was the difficult part. Sometimes we went on work trips. More often we were just lazy. The spirit was willing, the flesh was weak.<\/p>\n

Several times it looked as if he had expired entirely. Then, guiltily, we would water his withered stump and see him miraculously resurrected. But eventually the neglect was too much. After a particularly desiccating month, Jesus gamely sprouted three leaves. I chopped them off for a lasagne. They were the last he made. Jesus died for my din-dins.<\/p>\n

Now though? My kitchen is bushy with basil. My herb garden is, as Psalm 1:3 put it, like one \u201cwhose leaf does not wither \u2014 whatever they do prospers\u201d.<\/p>\n

Have we had a Pauline conversion to horticulture? Have we seen the light? No, it\u2019s more that our plant has a very bright light \u2014 one, in fact, on a consistent timer, provided by Auk. It is not just the light that is consistent. The hydroponics system waters the herbs at the right rate, and it nourishes them. So in return, from tomato salads to risottos, we are nourished by the body of our new basil plant. The second coming of Jesus is everything I could have hoped for.
Details \u00a3219, auk.com<\/a><\/p>\n

\"OrangeShokz Openrun Pro 2 bone conduction headphones<\/p>\n

Melvyn Bragg and I have been to many places together \u2014 intellectual and geographical. We have jogged through Geneva and run through Rio. Most recently, he told me about the evolution of lungs (first broadcast in June 2025) while my own lungs felt as if they were about to give up (it was comforting, bent double in Lausanne, to be able to blame my alveoli). As I trot around unfamiliar cities, it is so often In Our Time<\/a> and Melvyn \u2014 along with whichever cowed academics he is hectoring \u2014 that guide me.<\/p>\n

In Rome, I listened to an episode on the Borgias. In Boston, the episode on tea. In Thessaloniki, I learnt about the Greek myths: Heracles and Achilles, Hera and Hephaestus. And I very nearly stopped learning about them when, like a thunderbolt from Zeus but even more arbitrary, a lorry I hadn\u2019t spotted or heard whizzed past, apparently from nowhere. This is, I suppose, where the Shokz Openrun headphones come in. Normally, Melvyn speaks to me through my ears.<\/p>\n

Today, in a technique also used by sea mammals (The Whale \u2014 A History, first broadcast on May 21, 2009), he is speaking to me through sound conducted through the bones of my skull. The speakers go beside my ears, and the ears themselves are left free to be aware of my surroundings and any approaching lorries.
Details \u00a3169, Shokz<\/p>\n

\"Pulsi\u00d4Pulsio compression boots<\/p>\n

These trouserlike boots are many things. They are black. They are sleek. They are, at the push of a button, tighter than the stonewashed jeans you bought in your Jim Morrison phase. They are, in fact, best understood as a really big blood pressure cuff for your legs. Except with a lot more technology. Which makes it a little unfair that they gained another name around my house.<\/p>\n

As I sit in my chair, post-run, while they inflate and deflate, the bulge moving up and down my leg like a python eating a chicken, they come to be known as my \u201cpervert trousers\u201d. And it\u2019s true, anyone wearing these wouldn\u2019t gain an unbridled welcome at their local primary school. Jimmy Savile would doubtless sport them extremely well. But they aren\u2019t meant to look good. They are meant to make you feel good.<\/p>\n

Starting at my tired toes, moving up my fatigued thighs, they squeeze and release, squeeze and release. Air pumps in and out to massage my legs. They are, I am assured, \u201cdesigned to maximise blood circulation and remove lactic acid build-up and ideal for post-workout recovery and reducing muscle soreness\u201d. Which is worth getting some odd looks for. Besides, given that they have to be plugged into the wall, they offer limited pervert opportunities anyway.
Details \u00a3300, Pulsio<\/p>\n

\"EngoEngo 2 sunglasses<\/p>\n

There are some obvious parallels between my runs and the missions of a jet pilot. Both are fast, obviously \u2014 although in the interests of accuracy one might note that only one involves braving the dangers of the A3290. Both involve lightning reflexes, be it dodging MiGs or dog poo. And now both can be completed without losing focus by glancing down at one\u2019s speedometer.<\/p>\n

Because, thanks to Engo, runners in 2025 have an advantage perfected for fighter pilots in the 1960s: the head-up display. Just as Tom Cruise had his speed and vital statistics projected onto his aircraft canopy in Top Gun, I have mine projected onto my sunglasses. I cross the road without risking being splattered by glancing at my phone. I keep up my pace along the crucial canal straight, with everything I need to know in front of me. I pound on to the lock, my stats ever present, the onlookers admiring (I presume \u2014 I pass too fast to check).<\/p>\n

The advantage is that there is no excuse to stop and take a break while I consult my screen. The disadvantage, I find, is that there is no excuse to stop and take a break. I reach the halfway point without my customary pause to contemplate my numbers and my heartbeat\u2019s return to normal. I turn back somewhat slower \u2014 slow enough to see that the onlookers aren\u2019t admiring me after all.
Details \u00a3267, Engo Eyewear<\/p>\n

\"GogglesApple Vision Pro VR goggles<\/p>\n

My sons are with me. Pestering. Tugging on my arm. But I am somewhere else. I turn a dial and my view changes. No longer am I looking upon a belligerent five-year-old. I am on a mountaintop, gazing down. Too chilly, I think. So I tap my finger and, instead, I am on a beach, palm fronds rustling in the breeze. Then, with another gesture I open Netflix, put the cinema screen somewhere out to sea and settle down to watch.<\/p>\n

Apple has a long history of creating new revenue streams through the frankly underhand method of building deeply desirable products. These VR goggles are its latest attempt. Although it feels wrong to call them VR. This isn\u2019t necessarily a \u201cvirtual\u201d sort of reality. When I\u2019m not deliberately tuning out the children, I can choose to see the world around me. I can choose to be in my kitchen and just position the Netflix screen on the wall. Nor does the term \u201caugmented reality\u201d feel quite right. When I wear the goggles they aren\u2019t a mere bolt-on to the world outside. It feels like an alternative reality, but with pockets of unreality. So I can be writing a note in the kitchen \u2014 and where my dishwasher normally is, see an app with a spinning globe of Saturn. Or I can give up on the pretence of work and open a game that allows me to interact in my suburban kitchen with dinosaurs with big T. rex feet.<\/p>\n

This doesn\u2019t feel like simply another peripheral (to use a tech term). It feels like a wholly new way of bringing technology into my life \u2014 like the iPhone when it first arrived. My only caveat is that for now, unlike with the iPhone, I\u2019m not completely sure why I\u2019m bringing it in. It does feel slightly like a solution in search of a problem. Then the problem arrives, in the form of a persistent five-year-old. \u201cDaddy,\u201d the problem says, \u201ccan we do the dinosaur game?\u201d Even with expensive headsets, reality does have a tedious way of intruding.
Details From \u00a33,499, Apple<\/p>\n

\"FootMargaret Dabbs London luxury foot spa<\/p>\n

Initially, I didn\u2019t realise my wife was complaining. Several years earlier I had bought her a cheap foot spa and it had done excellent service. But, she told me one evening, it had just given her feet an electric shock.<\/p>\n

Now marriages are full of surprises. That is the wonder of uniting for life\u2019s journey with another human. So it should not in any way be construed as a gripe to say that feet, and the unexpected things one can do to them, have played a bigger conjugal role than I had anticipated when, all those years ago, I plighted my troth. I had assumed in my bachelor days that feet were merely a useful but uninteresting way of ending a leg.<\/p>\n

I was wrong. Feet are things to be massaged, rubbed and occasionally sanded. They require constant maintenance, with equipment that ranges from the chemical to the surgical \u2014 with tools that could do a good job on Italian charcuterie. So it was not obvious to me that they shouldn\u2019t shock you. Anyway, it turns out that ours did \u2014 and was broken. Which is why, by way of replacement we now have the Margaret Dabbs London ThermaSulis Luxury Foot Spa. As is appropriate for the feet that I have come to view as the third and fourth party in our marriage, this is a superior foot spa. From the outside it is like one of those curved Philippe Starck baths, except foot-sized. It\u2019s on the inside that the real magic happens. There are LED lights and bubbles, like an aqua disco for your feet. There is also a remote-controlled massager. With a single click it whirrs and buzzes, and I find I have automated myself out of a marital task. She relaxes. So do I. All it needs, I think, is an electric shock function.
Details \u00a3390, Margaret Dabbs<\/p>\n

\"WhiteDJI Neo drone<\/p>\n

There is scepticism among the children. Quite annoying scepticism. It\u2019s not that they don\u2019t see the point of a drone that follows you. They very much see the point. They set the drone going in front of their face, then run around the garden with it following at speed. It\u2019s that they don\u2019t see the point of a drone that follows me.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhat\u2019s it for?\u201d my middle son asks. \u201cIt\u2019s so it can film me.\u201d \u201cFilm you doing what?\u201d \u201cYou know. Manly things.\u201d \u201cWhat sort of manly things?\u201d he persists. Then, before I can answer, my eldest son interjects. \u201cIs it going to film you opening jam jars?\u201d<\/p>\n

What they don\u2019t know, I huffily explain, is that before they came along I had a life. What they also don\u2019t know is I have a work trip coming up somewhere snowy. \u201cIn fact,\u201d I retort with all the dignity of a middle-aged man having an argument about his masculinity with an 11-year-old boy, \u201cI intend to use it to film me skiing.\u201d That shuts them up.<\/p>\n

A few weeks later, I find myself on a beginner slope just outside Boston. I take the DJI Neo out of my pocket (it fits easily). I set it hovering, giving it time to lock on to my head. Then, humming the tune of Ski Sunday, I push in my poles, turn down the slope, cross my skis and fall face first into the snow. I brush the snow from my goggles, look up and see the drone, a few metres up, diligently filming. I muster some poise for the camera and hold up my palm for it to land. Then I put it back in my pocket and decide I don\u2019t need to bore my children with my holiday snaps after all.
Details \u00a3299, DJI<\/p>\n

\"ALeica Cine 1 home projector<\/p>\n

The first good thing about having a projector in the living room is that we can truthfully tell people we don\u2019t have a TV, and have them imagine that of an evening we gather as a family to read poetry and discuss Bertrand Russell essays. The second is that, of an evening, you can watch Indiana Jones as a family on a really big screen while eating popcorn and it\u2019s just like being at the movies. The bad thing, though, is that you have to find somewhere to put it. Ours balances precariously on a music stand that we erect every time we want to watch something and that we stub our toe on every time we forget to take it down. This is not the only option, obviously. Better organised and certainly more bling families have one that emerges from the ceiling. But then they have to cut a hole in their ceiling and get a motor into the floorboards above.<\/p>\n

What if, though, there was a third way? Leica\u2019s Cine 1 represents just that. It projects upwards. It is probably the smartest of this new breed of projector \u2014 that sit below the screen, rather than in front of it, and use fancy maths to ensure that each bit of image gets the right brightness and the right stretchedness. In this case, the \u201cright brightness\u201d is \u201cdazzlingly so\u201d. It\u2019s a hugely impressive projector, as well as being very pretty. And it\u2019s pretty hard to stub your toe on.
Details \u00a38,995, Leica<\/p>\n

\"LUMILumi SaunaPro<\/p>\n

The sweat gets into the keyboard. It drips on the letters and pools on the trackpad. Typing gets difficult. Amid all the moisture the cursor flicks randomly, as if it has a mouse version of Tourette\u2019s. But at least I\u2019m warm. My study sauna is doing its job.<\/p>\n

At first the study seems an odd place to put my new sauna. Work does not naturally combine with naked sweating. But the Lumi sauna is surprisingly compact, and surprisingly pretty: like a chic, hot barrel in the corner of the room. It is also \u2014 I cannot overlabour the point \u2014 warm. On an ordinary working-from-home winter Wednesday in our late-Victorian home, there always comes, around 11am, what I term the Heating Dilemma. As the radiators tip from hot to tepid to chilly, so do I. Then my choices are: go to a coffee shop and spend money unnecessarily. Or heat the whole house and spend even more money unnecessarily. With Lumi I have a third option: just heat a tiny bit of the house, but really, really hot. I strip off, hope that the postman won\u2019t come and continue working at a significantly more amenable 60C. <\/p>\n

Home saunas aren\u2019t new. I know of a couple of homes that have them built-in, now used mainly for storage. The Lumi feels different. It\u2019s a way to get a sauna without needing builders and electricians. If you don\u2019t like where it is, you can move it. Wherever it goes, though, it\u2019s probably not a good place for a work Zoom call.
Details \u00a32,495, Lumi<\/p>\n

\"EboEbo Air robot pet camera<\/p>\n

Probably I should have warned my wife that we had a home robot. Probably I should have explained that I saw it as a way of expressing love through the internet when I couldn\u2019t be present in person \u2014 rather than, as it was later termed by certain parties, a \u201csinister surveillance device\u201d. In my defence, its purpose seemed obvious to me. Enabot\u2019s Ebo Air is marketed in part as a way of checking in with your pets. A dumpy but speedy robot, it is a little like a squished Roomba. Like a Roomba \u2014 or a Dalek \u2014 its ideal habitat is a flat smooth floor. When it\u2019s on such a surface you can control it remotely through your phone, seeing what it sees and even talking through it. It is a proxy for you. In this way, Enabot promises, you can \u201ckeep your pets engaged and secure\u201d. Or, I quite reasonably thought, my wife. <\/p>\n

So it was that one day while my wife worked in the home office, I decided to keep her engaged and make her feel secure by enlisting the Ebo to say hello. It trundled over to the desk. It gave a little greeting. I saw her get up. Anyway, it turns out that my wife has an odd quirk. She doesn\u2019t, it transpires, like being loved through the internet. Through the app I saw her bend down \u2014 big and looming, like a Gulliver in knitwear. Then the world spun, the camera struggled to catch up and everything went dark. When the picture returned I could read something upside down: \u201cChopped tomatoes.\u201d The Ebo was locked in a kitchen cupboard.
Details \u00a3152, Enabot<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT000950713156\"Samsung Galaxy Ring<\/p>\n

Sometimes I get annoyed at my phone. I look at the daily step count, see a dip \u2014 a day of sloth amid the plateau of productive perambulation \u2014 and get sad. But often the dip is nothing of the sort. It simply represents an occasion when I went for a walk and left my phone at home. Could it not have intuited that?<\/p>\n

I mean, obviously it couldn\u2019t have. It\u2019s a phone. But it\u2019s annoying. If a man walks in a forest and doesn\u2019t take his phone, does that walk count towards his 10,000 steps? Clearly, the only sane answer to the question is \u201cyes\u201d. The purpose of walking 10,000 steps a day is to improve your health \u2014 not improve your score on the graph of your health app that, in any case, no one other than you sees. And yet the dip in the graph remains. It\u2019s hard not to feel like my phone\u2019s health app is rebuking me. Or, worse, disappointed in me.<\/p>\n

There is, though, a remedy in the form of wearable jewellery such as the Galaxy Ring. This is a device that records your activity, but never leaves you. So it is that on one hand I have my wedding ring: a symbol of constancy, fidelity and truth. And on the other I have my Galaxy Ring: also there for constancy, fidelity and truth. Just like a marriage, it knows my deepest secrets.<\/p>\n

As well as logging my step count and sending the results to my phone, it measures my heartbeat. I can see how I sleep and when I wake. I can track my workouts without worrying about whether my phone was there with me. I can use a Peloton, and because of the heartbeat sensor it will know I\u2019ve been sweating. I can also see my stress levels. I can see how they rise as deadlines approach, how they fall as I relax in the evening, how they spike like a seismograph during an earthquake when my five-year-old knocks a wine bottle out of the fridge and I only just resist the urge to shout.<\/p>\n

After a week, the Galaxy Ring is integrated into my life. Am I fitter and healthier? Not at all. But the activity graph no longer has annoying errors and at last my phone can stop judging me for the gaps in my step count. Although I fear it might now just be judging me for my parenting instead.
Details \u00a3399, Samsung<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT000950713150\"Denon PerL Pro earbuds<\/p>\n

There are certain questions that come to you at certain times in life, under the influence of certain narcotics, that you are certain at the time (roughly an hour after last orders in the union, while in student digs) are profound. Questions like, \u201cHow do I know anyone other than me is conscious?\u201d And, \u201cIf dogs could talk would they actually just go \u2018woof\u2019?\u201d And, \u201cWhat if what you see as red is completely different from what I see as red?\u201d And, relatedly, \u201cWhat if Beethoven doesn\u2019t sound the same for me as it does for you?\u201d<\/p>\n

It turns out that the last question isn\u2019t quite so lacking in profundity. Probably, the unique internal structure of the ear ensures that the dum-dum-dee-dums of his Symphony No 5 hit every ear drum differently. Not, though, ear drums serviced by the Denon PerL Pro. These wireless earbuds are designed to adjust to the ear canal. To set them up requires listening to some beeps and bloops that wouldn\u2019t seem out of place on an under-resourced Radio 4 sci-fi drama.But the headphones have \u2014 supposedly \u2014 built up a picture of my hearing profile and adjusted accordingly.<\/p>\n

How does Beethoven sound to me? Pretty good it turns out \u2014 noticeably better after personalisation. Hopefully it sounds exactly the same for you. But, as Wittgenstein and the metaphysical solipsists would say, I don\u2019t know that for certain. Quite probably, you\u2019re not even conscious anyway and this is all a waste of time.
Details \u00a3249, Denon<\/p>\n

\"NINTCHDBPICT000950713153\"Fellow Stagg kettle<\/p>\n

What temperature, I ask my guests, would they like their tea? There is, initially, a little confusion. \u201cBoiling?\u201d one of them tentatively replies. \u201cBoiling would be nice,\u201d he continues, before looking at me expectantly to check that this was the right answer.<\/p>\n

Is he sure? Some teas, I explain, might benefit from being a little cooler. With others it could come down to personal taste. We all have our own sugar and milk requirements. Why not the same variation for temperature? He seems unconvinced. I point out that his wife has gone for a green tea. You don\u2019t want a green tea, unmellowed by milk, to rip the skin off your palate.<\/p>\n

This seems a perfect test case for the Fellow Stagg EKG Pro kettle, which promises to reach and maintain a precise temperature of your choice. You can even set it to greet you with that temperature every morning, after inputting the altitude to provide the appropriate correction for air pressure. Tea is an exact science.<\/p>\n

I settle on 85C for her, pouring from the elegant matt-green spout, and raising it with a flourish as I go, like, I imagine, an experienced geisha at a tea ceremony. She sips. \u201cHow\u2019s your tea?\u201d I ask. \u201cColder,\u201d she confirms, with an audibly unscalded mouth. I wait for further elaboration, or perhaps even thanks. None comes.<\/p>\n

For her husband\u2019s Earl Grey, given that the milk will take the edge off anyway, I decide on 97.5C. Close enough to 100C to still have bite, but cool enough to enable more rapid drinking. He puts it to his lips. He sips. \u201cHow is it?\u201d I ask. \u201cIt\u2019s tea,\u201d he says. There is a sense we may have exhausted our tea-based conversation. \u201cToo cold?\u201d I ask. \u201cVery much like tea,\u201d he replies, with a certain finality.<\/p>\n

In the kitchen, the kettle remains poised, holding its 97.5C temperature, and ready to serve the unscalded palates of the world\u2019s tea-o-philes. I return to it, ashamed. We don\u2019t deserve it.
Details \u00a3195, Fellow at Harrods<\/p>\n

\"aNatureSpy camera trap<\/p>\n

When we sleep, the garden awakes. And strange things happen. Gloves get moved and gnashed. Bulbs get scattered. So do pigeon feathers, minus the pigeon owners. Rubbish appears. There was a loaf of bread one night, a tub of butter the next. Once we found a fish the length of my arm, rotting away a kilometre from the nearest body of water \u2014 like a clue in an Agatha Christie.<\/p>\n

Sometimes in the morning we get a hint of what the cause might be. There, amid the long grass, fox cubs frolic. They look innocent and joyful. But dark things, I know, happen at night. Improbable things too. How does a fox shift a fish the same size as it? Now, thanks to the Browning Recon Force Elite HP5 \u2014 I like a bit of nature equipment that feels more Chris Ryan than Chris Packham \u2014 I can at last get hints of an answer. We set it up one night in midsummer, tying it to a tree at shin height. It snaps a picture when anything passes.<\/p>\n

Two weeks later I take out the SD card to see what it found. There is a child, climbing into a den. There is a pair of stilettos and a pair of smart men\u2019s shoes (we had a summer party). There is another child, climbing into the same den. Then there is a fox going into the den. Fox. Child. Fox. Child. Children use the den by day, foxes by night. It\u2019s like those slum houses where immigrant shift workers own a third of a bed. To my disappointment, I don\u2019t see the foxes collectively carrying a fish that weighs the same as them: that remains inexplicable. But one mystery at least is solved: why our children\u2019s hair smells so bad.
Details \u00a3184.99, NatureSpy<\/p>\n

\u2022 Robots are coming for our jobs. Will we welcome them?<\/a><\/p>\n

\"aMammotion Luba 2 mower<\/p>\n

In Terminator 2 Arnold Schwarzenegger, the unstoppable robot killing machine of the previous movie, meets his successor. This newer model of Terminator is faster, stronger and attacks with even more remorseless remorselessness. Suddenly Arnie seems unstoppable no more. In the face of superior technology he is rendered vulnerable, pitiable \u2014 human even.<\/p>\n

A broadly similar scene of robot pathos occurs in our garden when the Mammotion Luba 2 arrives. For four years my Flymo robomower has scythed a path of dominance through the Whipple lawn. Unchallenged (except by the amorous advances of my tortoise), she has bounced from guidewire to guidewire, munching our grass. She isn\u2019t clever. She moves randomly, and full coverage is guaranteed simply by her relentless work ethic. Neither is she nimble. A couple of times a week she gets stuck on a garden chair, or tumbles outside the guidewire and has to be rescued. But she gets the job done. Then the Luba 2 arrives. The Luba 2 does not need a buried guidewire. You walk her round the perimeter once and afterwards she uses dozens of satellites to stay within it. She doesn\u2019t accidentally mow the furniture; she has intelligent vision that gives her obstacle avoidance. You can even if you desire (and I do) receive a live mower\u2019s-eye-view feed on your phone as she munches. Most of all, she isn\u2019t random. Having determined the shape of my lawn, she sets about vanquishing it methodically, leaving behind the neat lines of a stately home. It is an effortlessly superior job.<\/p>\n

After the first week my wife looks at the lawn and, with a chilling brutality I hope to never see directed at me, asks if we can chuck the loyal Flymo. That night I peer out onto the lawn. The Luba is there mowing the stripes and avoiding obstacles. It reaches the end of one stripe. This time, though, for some reason it reaches an obstacle but doesn\u2019t avoid it. Instead, in the spotlight of our security light, it repeatedly bashes against it. Forward. Reverse. Forward. Reverse. It feels aggressive. Sinister even. The object of its ire? The Flymo.
Details \u00a32,949, Mammotion<\/p>\n

\u2022 Inside vast Amazon warehouse \u2018loveable\u2019 robots are not just a pretty face<\/a><\/p>\n

\"aVieunite Textura screen<\/p>\n

The intention was to make this a daily art lesson. I installed the Vieunite Textura in my sons\u2019 bedroom with a view to introducing them to high culture. And I did, at first. It showed a rolling sequence of paintings in high definition \u2014 with low glare and within a frame that made them look close to the real thing \u2014 so they could wake to a Renoir one day, a Rubens another. <\/p>\n

Choosing the right painting did not even require me, mercifully, to know anything about paintings. From the app, a selection is curated from famous museums \u2014 the National Galleries of Scotland, the Art Institute of Chicago, the National Gallery \u2014 or painters: Monet, El Greco, Seurat, Kandinsky. The old masters and new are transported via Bluetooth to the wall. There they were also, in my imaginings, to be accompanied by my own National Gallery-style audio guide, as in a mini daily lecture I contextualised for my offspring.<\/p>\n

Instead, my ungrateful children walked past it nonplussed to strew Lego across the floor, or ran past it to punch a sibling. I alighted on another plan. It was not cultural education they needed but moral. For this I required a different facility: the ability to upload my own pictures. This week my sons have arrived in their bedroom to see an image of someone they respect more than me, offering them stern instruction. At the moment there is David Hasselhoff in his prime, beside an MS Paint speech bubble saying: \u201cTidy your room.\u201d
Details \u00a3699, Smartech at Selfridges<\/p>\n

\"aMagic AI mirror<\/p>\n

Mirror mirror on the wall, who is the buffest of them all? Well, judging by the feedback from my particular mirror, it\u2019s not me. On the screen, my personal trainer, Andrew, is as comforting as ever. \u201cTeamwork makes the dream work,\u201d he tells me, somewhat cryptically, as I try to follow his routine. I like Andrew. He\u2019s go-getting. He launches into a clich\u00e9 with the same gusto that he launches into a plank-burpee combo. I want his affirmation, and he gives it to me.<\/p>\n

I also know that while I can see Andrew in my new full-length mirror, he can\u2019t see me. He recorded this routine a long time ago. He doesn\u2019t remotely care about me. And yet, the Magic Mirror is not just some portrait-orientation television replacement \u2014 a Rosemary Conley VHS for the internet age \u2014 because it can indeed see what I\u2019m doing, even if Andrew cannot. Using image recognition, it records my attempts and marks my competence. Like all good personal trainers, it forces me to do different things.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s not perfect: unlike good personal trainers, who are generally well versed in physiology, during one sit-up session it confuses my head for my bottom, leading to some very peculiar instructions. But it\u2019s good enough to achieve what it needs to: making me exercise like someone is watching, and occasionally letting me know that that someone is disappointed in me. Not Andrew, mind. He compliments me on my amazingness. Then the machine takes over and searches for the most positive thing to say: \u201cCongrats! You did it,\u201d it tells me, with just a hint of passive aggression.
Details \u00a31,399, Magic<\/p>\n

\"aSuunto Vertical adventure watch<\/p>\n

There are some notable but subtle differences between my Suunto Vertical and my climbing partner, Andy. When the Suunto goes slightly off route, for instance, it discreetly buzzes. When Andy \u2014 whose place as chief navigator on climbing holidays the watch is replacing \u2014 goes slightly off route, he simply insists he is on route. When the Suunto realises a significant course correction is required, it places a helpful arrow on a map. When Andy accepts, at last, that a significant course correction is required, he gets out an old OS map and convinces himself that the features around us correspond to those on the map, even though they don\u2019t. And when the watch finds itself somewhere wholly unexpected, it tells you where you are and allows you to plot a new route home. Andy, in contrast, alternates between dejectedly eating a pork pie and passionately swearing in Northern Irish. <\/p>\n

All of which is to say that when I decide to go for a solo climbing weekend in the Cairngorms, the presence of the Suunto is, at the very least, a competent Andy substitute. Rather than requiring pork pies for sustenance, it has 85 hours of charge and the ability to top up from the sun (a largely theoretical feature in Scotland in March). Each morning I can plan and upload my route without worrying whether it\u2019s going to take me to the wrong mountain. Even when a blizzard comes in, it is able to show me where I should be going. And it does all this without ever intimating that perhaps I should either stop complaining or just learn to use a bloody map myself.
Details \u00a3625, Suunto<\/p>\n

\"aSwarovski AX Visio binoculars<\/p>\n

Like all good binoculars, the Swarovski AX Visio does the basics. Namely, making things in the distance seem closer while also letting you imagine you are in a special forces sniper team. This set is especially good at the latter. When set to compass mode, I can scan across the sky, pretending that the bearings projected on my eyepiece are there for artillery ranging or terrorist spotting. Switch out of compass mode, though, and it does something unexpected, less applicable in the SAS but rather more useful in my actual life: bird-spotting. It will tell you what bird, or mammal, you are looking at. Hold down a button, keep the animal in the target, and the AI has a stab at telling you what it is. Look, it\u2019s not flawless. It correctly identifies my son as \u201cHomo sapiens\u201d but my wife as \u201cFelis catus\u201d. A large black dog is categorised, somewhat alarmingly, as a bear. My father-in-law is moderately put out to be described as a \u201ctufted duck\u201d. Most of the time, though, it gets it right. It\u2019s just that if my mission was, say, to take out a nefarious squirrel, I\u2019d definitely want to call in a spy satellite for a second opinion.
Details \u00a33,820, Swarovski Optik at Selfridges<\/p>\n

\"aRay-Ban Meta Wayfarer smart glasses<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t get entirely the reaction I expected when I show off my sleek new Ray-Bans in the office. \u201cWhat a sad little life you have,\u201d one of The Times\u2019s news editors says as I approach the desk. Another deploys the word \u201ccreepy\u201d. Mind you, they are not the intended audience. The intended audience is my colleagues in the reporters\u2019 WhatsApp group. They are, today, getting regular updates of office goings-on via the discreet video camera in my Ray-Ban Meta sunglasses. \u201cLivestream life like never before\u201d the frames promise, alongside images of swishy and exciting people doing swishy and exciting things (just in case the swishy people also turn out to be perverts, a warning light is displayed when you are filming). So, livestreaming life is exactly what I do. I livestream going over to pitch an editor a story about some dog research. I livestream making a mediocre (definitely not La Pavoni) coffee. I livestream ambling off to the lifts.<\/p>\n

The sunglasses, made in collaboration with Meta, the parent company of Facebook, also contain headphones so you can listen to music, hear notifications and make calls. But the video is the biggest innovation. You can save its footage direct to an app and upload it live to social media. Which means you can document your life like never before, while wearing what look like normal glasses. What the technology can\u2019t do is make that life interesting. \u201cIt\u2019s just like being there,\u201d says one colleague, working from home, as I record the walk to the water cooler. I don\u2019t think she meant that in a good way.
Details \u00a3329, Ray-ban<\/p>\n

\"aY-Brush sonic electric toothbrush<\/p>\n

Dentists have a habit of saying things that are unpleasant. Such as \u201cDon\u2019t eat so many sweets\u201d and \u201cThis will pinch a bit\u201d and \u201cYou must brush each tooth for ten seconds\u201d. Somehow, even though we all know that doing more of the third will enable us to do more of the first and experience less of the second, the instruction seems wholly unreasonable. Even as we nod assent, our cavity-filled mouth still open, we know that we will not brush for ten seconds per tooth. We also know that our dentist knows we won\u2019t do this, because we have simply too many teeth. What, though, if instead of brushing harder we brushed smarter? What if we brushed all our teeth at once? Then, surely, ten seconds in total would be feasible?<\/p>\n

That\u2019s the idea behind the Y-Brush. It is to teeth what a mechanical wash is to cars. One big brush curves over your teeth like a bristly gum shield to do the whole top row, then the whole bottom row, in one go. It doesn\u2019t pretend to be better than a normal diligent brush. It just claims to be as good as one, yet taking only 20 seconds in total, the sonic-powered bristles jiggling about to scour every surface. Look, people will laugh. My wife objects to how it sits on our basin looking like a Victorian medical contraption \u2014 upside down, grinning dementedly. When I take it through an airport, the security guard calls over his friends to look at it. They can laugh if they want to, with their plaque-covered smiles. I\u2019m the one with sparkling teeth, and 1 minute 40 seconds more time in the day.
Details \u00a3101.99, Y-Brush<\/p>\n

\"aLa Pavoni Cellini Classic coffee maker<\/p>\n

I\u2019d imagine this is how Silvio Berlusconi felt \u2014 this mix of guilt, regret and excitement \u2014 whenever he realised it was, once again, time for a new mistress. My stovetop Bialetti has never given me cause for complaint. Diligently, with economical Italian style, each day it has awoken me with an espresso and helped me to start my day. It has seen me at my bleary-eyed, pre-coffee worst and ensured I become my caffeinated best. Then into my kitchen came La Pavoni\u2019s Cellini Classic, turning heads with the brash confidence of a bikini model entering a bunga bunga party. Like my old Bialetti, it\u2019s an all-metal Italian design classic. But it is swishier, curvier, unblackened by time and \u2014 cover your ears, loyal stovetop espresso makers \u2014 makes a considerably better coffee.<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t think this day would come. Of course, as the years passed, I always knew I had other options, that there were other, younger models. But none appealed. Our bond was too strong. Nespresso machines felt too synthetic. Many high-end versions felt too high maintenance, with their pressure tubing and precise tamping instructions. Others, designed to give you the same quality but without the requirement for expertise, felt the reverse; with digital displays and push-button settings, they looked too much like my office machine. Coffee needs a bit of ritual. La Pavoni is perfectly in the middle. It calls itself \u201csemi-professional\u201d; the \u201cprofessional\u201d bit means it tastes great and involves some artistry, the \u201csemi\u201d bit means I can do said artistry. By the time you read this, my La Pavoni \u2014 sadly only on loan \u2014 will be gone. And, having tasted such riches, my wife and I will be having a serious marital conversation. Is it time to get our own? Are we going to have to thank the Bialetti for its service, then put it on the shelf?
Details \u00a31,499.95, La Pavoni at Smeg<\/p>\n

\"aSteam Deck handheld gaming PC<\/p>\n

There are games from around the early 2000s at which I was embarrassingly good. Ask me to invade the Holy Roman Empire in Medieval: Total War or take out a Chinatown gangster with a sniper rifle in Grand Theft Auto and, still, I can picture the mouse movements required. Then I got married. I\u2019d become a man; it was time to put away childish things. Since then I have had three children, written five books and taken up running. Except the books failed, the kids disrespect me and my knees hurt. Productivity is overrated. Meanwhile, like a former footballer who still follows his team (or perhaps more appositely, like a recovered alcoholic who still lingers in the drinks aisle) I have kept an eye on games. I have watched YouTube videos of better, sleeker carjackings. I have read reviews of more extensive medieval conquest games. I have dreamt of leading those conquests, of jacking those cars. <\/p>\n

Then along comes Steam Deck. For the first time, there is a handheld gaming PC. Designed to be portable, it isn\u2019t a midlife-crisis statement in the living room like, say, a PlayStation 5. It can instead \u2014 like a vodka bottle in the toilet cistern \u2014 be hidden away. But inside its sleek black exterior lies a full PC. And the result? During my commute I have access to the 20 years of games I have missed. I can take out gangsters with photorealistic graphics. I can not only invade the Holy Roman Empire but \u2014 in the sequel to Medieval: Total War \u2014 conquer the New World too. Technologically the Steam Deck is a marvel. Personally and professionally it\u2019s been a catastrophe. Giving me a gaming computer has been like giving a bottle of whisky to an alcoholic. I used to work on that commute. I used to read books at night. Now I practise carjacking and overtaxing colonies. It\u2019s a miracle I even wrote this column. But gosh, it\u2019s fun.
Details From \u00a3349, Steam<\/p>\n

\"aHotel Chocolat Velvetiser<\/p>\n

At meal times, it\u2019s said that Chinese emperors would sit down to a selection of dishes, choosing what to eat from the dozens of options provided. Most of the food would go untouched. The waste must have been vast. But then, you can do that if you\u2019re an emperor. As with the absolute sovereigns of ancient civilisations, so with three-year-olds in my house at breakfast. Parents can often feel like slaves. Rarely is this so true in our house as between the hours of 7am and 8am, while serving breakfast, with every cereal type requested at ever-increasing volume. Which brings us to Hotel Chocolat and its sublime Velvetiser.<\/p>\n

It promises \u201cbarista-quality\u201d hot chocolate. The sleek copper machine arrives like a mocha pot in a world of Nescaf\u00e9, a freshly brewed cafetiere in the freeze-dried Eighties. Its sachets come, like good coffee, with provenance and tasting notes: a hint of chilli here, ginger there. After frothing \u2014 for about two minutes \u2014 it pours into the cup like a fluffy chocolate cloud. I didn\u2019t know I needed barista-quality hot chocolate until I tasted it. Unfortunately, neither did my children. The result? Now there are three extra dishes to be provided at the table: hot chocolates. Mind you, unlike the meals of the Chinese emperors, this is a dish that is reliably consumed.
Details \u00a399.95, Hotel Chocolat<\/p>\n

\"aYves Saint Laurent Rouge Sur Mesure lipstick maker<\/p>\n

There is a surprising amount for men to enjoy in Rouge Sur Mesure, a home lipstick printer by Yves Saint Laurent. It loads like a shotgun, for one. \u201cKer-klunk\u201d it goes as you put in the blush-pink cartridge. Ker-klunk it continues as you add a delicate shade of red. I can imagine I am an SAS hostage rescuer on a daring night-time raid, rather than a husband installing a choose-your-own lipstick machine for a mildly technophobic wife. Then there\u2019s the app. When I point the phone towards my wife, on screen it shows versions of her with different lipstick colours. Briefly, tantalisingly, I have a customisable wife. Except, just on the lips. Also, the lips object and start saying things. And the hands take control of the phone. You can choose a colour to automatically match your Christmas party frock, or pick something bolder to kiss Santa under the mistletoe.<\/p>\n

My wife chooses something a bit more muted. She presses the button and from out of the machine, emerging like a pink wormcast, comes the chosen colour \u2014 in just the right quantities for one application. It works, but my wife is not completely sold. For her, part of the fun of lipstick is going to a shop, trying it out and \u201cgetting away from everyone. Seeing how it is made kills the magic: like seeing inside the sausage factory.\u201d For women who change their lipstick colour regularly, however, she tells me this would be just the ticket. Apparently I know several such women, although have never noticed their ever-changing lips. When I point out that my not noticing \u2014 as a man \u2014 might negate the point of the regular lipstick changes, it is strongly implied that that view is precisely the problem with men.
Details \u00a3269, YSL Beauty<\/p>\n

\"aBang and Olufsen Beolab 28 wireless speakers<\/p>\n

How do you judge a sound system? I once interviewed the lead singer of Napalm Death who said he liked to make music so loud that it \u201cupsets people\u2019s digestive systems\u201d. He was banned from performing in a concert at the V&A in case he shattered the pottery. That is a serious sound system. It\u2019s also not quite what I\u2019m looking for when I install the Beolab 28 in my living room. It is, on the face of it, a sophisticated sound system for sophisticated people. It sits, sophisticatedly, looking vaguely disapproving that it has landed in a household of audiophilistines. I need some audiophiles. I invite round my neighbours, professional mandolin players who once made a hit single about a parrot that included the rather un-Napalm Death line, \u201cIf I joined the army \/ Wouldn\u2019t it be super! \/ I couldn\u2019t join the Royal Marines \/ I\u2019d be a parrot-trooper.\u201d<\/p>\n

Unlike us, they already have a high-spec sound system. They come to judge ours, giving it the grudging approval of a professional. I switch it on and my two-year-old watches, mesmerised, as the wooden slats pull aside to reveal the cylindrical speakers. It is imposing, but not in a scary way. I select some Beethoven on my phone. Then it plays, set to the sort of respectfully robust volume that speakers of this stature deserve. Crockery remains extant, digestive systems remain largely unruffled. But it is still loud enough that Whipple Junior runs into the next room crying, utterly appalled, and demanding to be hugged. It\u2019s not quite rock\u2019n\u2019roll, but I like to think Napalm Death would approve.
Details \u00a314,500 Bang & Olufsen<\/p>\n

\"aFliteboard<\/p>\n

There is a problem with jet skis. Yes, they are fast. Yes, they are fun. But they also make you look like a total idiot. Everyone else is trying to enjoy a nice day out at the beach and you\u2019re buzzing around on a lethal waterbound motorbike. There is also a problem with windsurfing boards. Yes, you are at one with the ocean. Yes, you are able to whizz noiselessly over the waves. But they also require skill, years of dedication and a favourable wind. Into this gap steps Fliteboard. What, its creators thought, if you attached a motor to a windsurfing board? What if you made it electric so you didn\u2019t sound like a horny teenager on a 250cc trail bike? Would it attract windsurfing wannabes who also have a realistic appraisal of their own skill set? Would it, in other words, attract me? <\/p>\n

Over the course of a single session in Weymouth I go from wobbling uncertainly on my knees then falling off, to wobbling less uncertainly on my legs, pushing the speed to 20mph while humming Surfin\u2019 USA and then falling off. It is enormous fun, especially when it goes fast enough to use its hydrofoil, leaving me balancing on a slowly-rising platform like the star prize in The Price is Right. Looking at the proper windsurfers, I do feel a bit of a fraud. But, crucially, I\u2019m also not being really annoying. I am happily enjoying the sea, not ruining others\u2019 enjoyment of it. As if to underline this, there is a flicker, a ghostly streak of light blue. Two dolphins have come to inspect the board, to judge its credentials. With a leap that causes me to fall off again, they begin a half-hour \u2014 one of the best of my life \u2014 of frolicking around me. I can only assume that, in their view, it has passed.
Details From \u00a38,248, Flite <\/p>\n

Vespa Elettrica scooter\"NINTCHDBPICT000857871669\"<\/p>\n

Before the Vespa arrives, there are two things I have to do. The first is to pass a test: the government, I discover, is oddly fastidious about people on scooters knowing how to drive them. The second is to buy a suede jacket: my wife, it turns out, is fastidious too and doesn\u2019t like people with my dress sense sullying objects of beauty. To ride a sleek silver Vespa you need to be a sleek silver fox is, I think, her logic. When I hop aboard, twisting the throttle, I feel less like a silver fox and more like a 19-year-old preparing to zip around the town square like James Dean, ostentatious cigarette in mouth, hoping to be spotted by the ladies. Which is probably also precisely why silver foxes (or, at least, men of a certain age) get Vespas.<\/p>\n

This Vespa, though, has an extra twist. It is all-electric. No exhaust pipe, no noisy engine, just a lot of torque (at least, by the judgment of someone who has never done this before) and the slightly smug feeling of commuting to the station without harming the planet. It is a smugness only marginally undermined by reminding myself I normally do that commute on a bicycle. The scooter is astonishingly easy to use. There is a clever display, which doesn\u2019t undermine the bike\u2019s retro styling, and a charging plug that goes straight in a normal socket and gives it a 60-mile range. It is, most of all, fun. Driving back, opening the throttle, I find myself grinning. I feel the wind battering my face, I see the lampposts whizzing by. I hear myself say, \u201cVroom vroom\u201d, which is ironic, because going \u201cvroom\u201d is one of the few things this electric bike definitely doesn\u2019t do.
Details \u00a36,500 Vespa<\/p>\n

\"aRuark R410 audio system<\/p>\n

After installing the speaker, I feel odd urges. I feel a need for Abba songs, for occasional tables laden with cheese-and-pineapple sticks, for pampas grass in the front garden. Then, for the neighbours to pop round, crack open a bottle of Blue Nun, nibble on the pineapple and put their car keys in a bowl. Speakers are rarely about the sound. Doubtless there are people who can tell the difference between a high-end speaker and a really high-end speaker, just as there are others who can tell the difference between a very expensive bottle of wine and a bottle of Blue Nun. I am not one of them. <\/p>\n

When I buy a speaker, after a certain level how it looks is more important than how it sounds. And for the Ruark Audio R410 \u2014 which sounds great \u2014 how it looks is, broadly speaking, suburban Seventies chic tinged with the promise of paisley shirts and swinging. As it sits on the corner table, its slatted wood fa\u00e7ade exudes quiet disapproval that that table is not Habitat. When I go to switch it on, I have a twinge of regret that I\u2019m not swishing flares behind me. I choose the music, then, with care, cast songs from my phone, displayed discreetly on a very non-Seventies colour screen. I start with Waterloo, then move on to Step into Christmas. I try Mozart and it sounds fine. I put on a bit of Bon Jovi, though, and everything is wrong. By way of apology for sullying its aesthetic, I give it some Joni Mitchell. And all is well again. Now where did I leave my car keys?
Details \u00a31,299, Ruark<\/p>\n

\"aSteam Box lunchbox<\/p>\n

There is a Domino\u2019s stand that distributes pizza slices, along with diabetes and regret. There is an energy drinks stand, decorated in the aesthetic of 1980s railway graffiti, giving away lurid cans with names like \u201cKaboom\u201d and \u201cSuperdeath\u201d. And then there is me, in the middle of it all, eating hot homemade spag bol. It is lunchtime at the University of Oxford Freshers\u2019 Fair, and I am manning the Times stand. Around me the freshers are walking memento mori. As each passes our table they leave, oblivious, a little hurricane of cognitive dissonance behind. In that brain I am still 18. In front of me is the fresh-faced, gender-fluid, occasionally annoying, occasionally life-affirming proof that I\u2019m very much not 18. But if I\u2019ll never be young and healthy again, maybe I can be old and healthy. There is something uniquely unpleasant about conferences and trade fairs. Whether it is a science conference, the Tory party conference or the induction here in Oxford of many of those who will one day end up at the Tory conference, the marquees always feel the same. Airless and stale. Vitamin deserts wafted in coffee breath. <\/p>\n

This is why, today, in defiance of the enticements of the fast-food vouchers and bowls of corporately branded sweets, I bring my bolognese and my Steam Box. The Steam Box looks like a chic lunchbox, albeit a relatively bulky and heavy one. That bulk hides its secret. Add a bit of water, push a button, and the battery-powered steamer gets steaming \u2014 heating up food on the go. There, eating wholesomely in the middle of thousands of students away from home for the first time, I like to think I am a message from their mums \u2014 an object lesson in how it is possible to have a good diet wherever you are. Then I spot that the Subway stand is giving away free cookies, my resolve crumbles, and it is all for naught.
Details \u00a3210, Steam Box<\/p>\n

\"RedSpyraThree water blaster<\/p>\n

Everyone keeps on implying subtly, or not so subtly \u2013 and to my mind inexplicably \u2013 that these water guns aren\u2019t for me. When I open the box children materialise and start buzzing, appearing as if from nowhere like fruit flies around a ripe banana. When I announce that these are serious adult gadgets for my serious adult job, my wife raises an eyebrow and the three-year-old says, repeatedly and unceasingly, \u201cCan I? Can I? Can I?\u201d So I decide grudgingly, in defiance of the advertising material that depicts sophisticated adults using the Spyra water guns for their sophisticated water games, that yes, he can. Outside we go. To be clear, these are not guns that one pumps. They are guns that run off batteries. They don\u2019t squirt water. They blast it. They release it ballistically. They do so in an adult fashion, for adults. They have recoil. So, I explain to Christopher, he must point it away from people, and certainly away from people\u2019s faces. He promises he will. He picks up the gun with difficulty. He is barely able to angle the barrel. He holds it, tottering, out of proportion, like a child soldier with an AK-47. Then, delighted, he shoots me in the face. It\u2019s not my proudest moment. But history will record that after that unexpected provocation we had a water fight. It will also record that the 41-year-old father of three very much emerged victorious. I did warn him.
Details \u00a3122.40, Spyra<\/p>\n

\"aH2O Audio Sonar Pro<\/p>\n

There was once a place where Melvyn Bragg could not find me. Where, as I put on my swimming trunks, I could put aside the prospect of a brisk tutorial on the siege of Constantinople. Where, as I braced for the cold and took my first strokes, I braced myself to be without a diverting 45 minutes on the Nicene Creed. Where, as I swam, I could not wear headphones, so I also could not be accompanied by Kierkegaard, Borges or (an invigoratingly short title for an In Our Time episode) Hell. This, as it happens, is a source of sadness. When I improve my body I like to improve my mind. It\u2019s an efficient way to pack in all the wholegrain together (the May 1, 2008 episode, The Enclosures of the 18th Century, gives useful background on packing in the wholegrain). So I prefer to run. But today I am swimming, and as I put down my head for a spot of front crawl, at last Bragg is with me. Thus, so too is the Battle of Cr\u00e9cy.<\/p>\n

H2O Audio\u2019s bone-conducting headphones are waterproof and designed for swimming. They attach to my goggles and can store music, uploaded from an app (however clever the tech, the laws of physics ensure there\u2019s no hope of a Bluetooth or 5G connection underwater \u2013 for an explanation listen to the November 12, 2009 episode, Radiation). So it is that as I push into my tenth lap, Bragg is there to grumpily push the academics into getting on with talking about the battle itself. At the halfway mark he is chivvying them to explain the massacre of the Genoese crossbowmen. By the time I finish my workout, the noble English longbowmen are finishing off the whimpering French knights.
Details \u00a3144, h2o Audio<\/p>\n

\"aUnistellar eVscope 2<\/p>\n

I remember the first time I saw Saturn. I mean properly saw Saturn. It was a crisp and clear winter\u2019s night and I had a small telescope. Pointing it at the right bit of the sky I put my eye to the viewfinder, focused, and there it was: a fuzzy orb with unmistakable rings. I recall thinking: how astonishing \u2013 impudent, even \u2013 that it had been there all this time, this wonder, waiting to be seen. I was 40. That was also the last time I saw Saturn. I saw it on that occasion because my father was with me. Dad, being a proper Dad with a capital D, can rewire a plug, plumb a washing machine and, like some sort of wise man from the east, tell you the location of any star or planet at any given time. I assumed that one day I would be the same, but I am merely a dad, with a lower case d. <\/p>\n

Now, though, I have the Unistellar eVscope 2 and I need a Dad no more \u2014 at least from an astronomical perspective. Placing my telescope in the garden, I select the astronomical object I want to see and it finds it. I ask for M57, the Ring Nebula, and after some whirring and whizzing there it is: a multicoloured menacing Eye of Sauron that has been watching me all my life. The Crab Nebula, the Duck Nebula, the blue Oyster Nebula follow. I press for Saturn and, much like a Dad, it informs me without judgment but perhaps with a little disappointment that it can\u2019t show it to me because the Earth is in the way. Unistellar has replaced Dad with an app. And I don\u2019t even have to reward it with beer.
Details \u00a33,599 Unistellar <\/p>\n

\"aCowboy e-bike<\/p>\n

Imagine, for a moment, that you had a tandem bike. Imagine that whenever the going got tough, your fellow cyclist stepped up the effort. When you started out, he or she pedalled that bit harder to give you a little boost. When a hill approached, they gamely stood on the pedals and sweated away. Throughout, you just kept on cycling at the same pleasant, easy pace. What would happen? Well, depending on your relationship to the other rider, you would get either a divorce or a punch. The Cowboy C4 e-bike is just like that, except without the threat of violence. Doing away with the tedious necessity to adjust manually the output of the electric motor, instead it monitors how much effort you are putting into cycling and automatically increases its assistance accordingly. The result, as I discover on a short cycle ride around a nearby lake, is a very pleasant amalgam between cycling and sitting on my bum watching the ducks. Twenty minutes later I park the bike, unflustered, unruffled, and check out the stats on its smartphone app. First comes the distance: 1.4 miles. Next, the fitness goals. During that distance, it says, apparently without a sense that this might be moderately embarrassing for me, I burnt seven calories. I have had sneezes that have been more slimming. Still, like the best tandem partner, it is there not to criticise or chivvy but to support. \u201cThe weekend warrior is back,\u201d my bike app tells me cheerily, if not accurately, when I dismount.
Details From \u00a32,037, Cowboy<\/p>\n

\"aBird Buddy smart feeder<\/p>\n

There is a push notification from the BBC about a new horror in Ukraine. There is a push notification from HSBC about a new horror in my bank account. And then there is another \u2014 from my bird table. With this missive the world seems that bit kinder, my phone that bit less hostile. \u201cYou have had visitors,\u201d it says. Then it sends me a picture of them. Installing the Bird Buddy was weird. Even as a tech columnist used to the idea that everything from my coffee machine to my footstool should have Bluetooth connectivity, adding a wi-fi link to my bird table felt like a technification too far. Yet, somehow, rather than making me feel more distanced from the tangible world it has had the reverse effect.<\/p>\n

Each morning, as usual, I wake to a series of emails from people in the US and a smattering of WhatsApps from friends out late. Now, I also have a rundown of the early-morning activity at the feeder. A blackbird. A blue tit. A squirrel. Another blue tit. Nature, I think somewhat piously, is a wonderful tonic. Another squirrel. Yet another (or possibly the same) squirrel. Each comes with a photograph, a video and an AI identification. A squirrel\u2019s bum, again. Nature, I think slightly less piously, can be a bit annoying. Within a week there are so many squirrel pictures you could put them in a flipbook and see the greedy sod getting fatter. This is the first iteration of the Bird Buddy and it\u2019s wonderful. But I do have an idea for a tweak: if it can automatically identify squirrels, would it be so bad if it could automatically electrocute them? It would be the perfect fusion of the natural world and our brave technological \u2014 and squirrel-free \u2014 future. And the video would definitely improve my mornings.
Details From \u00a3156, Bird Buddy<\/p>\n

\"aRoomba Combo robot vacuum and mop<\/p>\n

My wife doesn\u2019t like our robomop. Talk of robot apocalypse is in the air. Chat GPT-4 is already threatening our nice, middle-class jobs. And now there\u2019s a sleek, black, semi-sentient disc licking our floor clean. \u201cWhy don\u2019t you do a dog column?\u201d asks my wife. \u201cDogs would do the same job, be nice, and wouldn\u2019t threaten to take over humanity.\u201d I am less antagonistic. To me, the Roomba Combo j7+ vacuum cleaner and mop, from iRobot, is the logical next move for the company that has already cornered the market for mildly creepy autonomous vacuum cleaners. And, frankly, if it can keep the floor clean it saves me from feeling guilty about not keeping the floor clean. <\/p>\n

As a devoted fan of robot lawnmowers, I am impressed by its programming. While my lawnmower will just drive off in random directions for hours, the mop learns the layout of the room then attacks it in stripes, sucking where sucking is required, mopping where mopping is needed. I start to consider it a friend \u2014 or perhaps a more useful, less annoying version of a child \u2014 and watch with pride as, like a child, it maps our kitchen. One morning I leave the door open and its curiosity gets the better of it. I find it lost, far from home in the study, its battery long dead. Mournfully it lies there, killed by its own intrepidness, like a Victorian explorer trying to find the source of the Nile. But when I plug it in and shut the door, it is revived. It is impossible not to anthropomorphise robomop. It\u2019s not that I think it feels affection for me \u2014 if its programming required, it would probably happily vacuum me to death then mop me to a shiny buff. But so what? I used to have a pet praying mantis which, if it had grown big enough, would probably have eaten me. I cannot be cross with it for that \u2014 it\u2019s simply its nature. Anyway, the robomop can\u2019t yet do stairs; humanity is safe for now. And until then, our ground floors will be a lot shinier.
Details \u00a3549, iRobot<\/p>\n

\"aKindle Scribe<\/p>\n

I have never understood who it is that highlights passages on their Kindle. Worse still, who switches on the facility for seeing what others have highlighted? Nothing, for me, is more likely to undermine the profundity of a statement in a novel than to see the little dotted line pop up: \u201c357 people have highlighted this passage.\u201d All the more so when I\u2019m reading a Lee Child thriller. So it wasn\u2019t immediately clear to me why I needed a Kindle with a pen, to make this highlighting process even easier. Do we really need more people informing their fellow readers which of Jack Reacher\u2019s bons mots is especially well formed? Then I tried it \u2014 not as a way to tell others my thoughts (at least, not directly) but as a way to record my own. I review a lot of books and read a lot of academic papers. I like hard copies because I can scribble on them; I like digital copies because I can search them. With this Kindle, I can do both. In a minor but significant way, it makes my life easier. The paperless office, long prophesied, has not arrived because paper is useful. Maybe this will get us a little closer to the dream. And if you\u2019re reading this on a Kindle, you can underline that typically perspicacious prediction of mine.
Details \u00a3239.99, Amazon Kindle<\/p>\n

\"aPhilips PerfectDraft Beer Machine<\/p>\n

There comes a time, in the affairs of man, when thoughts turn to a pub of one\u2019s own. It is a time when the music in your local is just a touch too loud, friends a touch too distant, children more than a touch too close. That is when a gentleman of a certain age finds the shed calling. This gentleman has dreams of dartboards above the toolbox, of seeing his breath fog up as he plays billiards beside the family bikes. Most of all he has dreams of a pint, a pint that he has just pulled, using a proper handle and a proper pump. That gentleman is me. And that pint comes from the Philips PerfectDraft Beer Machine. For the home publican, this tool has much to recommend it. It takes real (albeit mini) kegs, which you can have delivered containing branded beer (I, being a man of a certain age, go for Leffe and Goose Island). It refrigerates them to the right temperature and has a handle that is satisfying to pull, while perhaps explaining pompously to any children who will listen the importance of holding the glass at 45 degrees. And \u2014 since men of a certain age like gadgets as well as pub nostalgia \u2014 it has a display to tell you how cold it is and how much is left. I take my first sip. \u201cAaah,\u201d I sigh, watching the condensation drip down the glass like someone in a 1980s Heineken advert. My future has arrived. I might not have friends any more, but I do have a pub.
Details \u00a3232.83, Philips PerfectDraft at Amazon<\/p>\n

\"aWithings Body Comp scale<\/p>\n

Until a few weeks ago not only was I uninformed of my pulse wave velocity \u2014 I didn\u2019t even know it existed as a concept. Nor did I know my body fat percentage. Today, thanks to my Withings Body Comp scale, I know they are, respectively, 6.1m\/s and 15.5 per cent. I also know, after googling, that pulse wave velocity \u2014 the speed at which blood pressure pulses propagate through my system \u2014 is linked to arterial health. The faster the pulse can move, the higher the blood pressure, the worse the arteries. My body fat is fine. My cardiovascular health could be better. Should I be thankful for this information? I find idioms at war in my mind. On the one hand, ignorance is definitely bliss. On the other, forewarned is forearmed. Which is it to be? <\/p>\n

Modern life is about accepting that more and more of your household objects are going to find more and more ways to judge you \u2014 normally via the medium of Bluetooth. So it is with my bathroom scales. Whereas once I would have simply learnt my weight, today I gather data on an app. I construct graphs, I view trajectories. According to independent validation of the scales, the fat-mass estimate is good enough to use clinically, while the pulse wave velocity measure is pretty accurate. Do I want to know its findings? Not really. But perhaps I should. Knowing about my health \u2014 especially once I\u2019ve reached the age where I notice the early warning signs, such as hankering after constructing a pub \u2014 means I can do something about it. Because there is, I fear, a third idiom that settles the debate firmly in favour of the scales: a stitch in time saves nine.
Details \u00a3189.95, Withings<\/p>\n

\"aMoleskine smart writing set<\/p>\n

Sometimes being a journalist is disappointing. As a teenager I imagined a life on the edge of war zones, drinking beer through grizzled stubble beneath a languorously swishing ceiling fan. Sitting alone in some sticky southeast Asian bar, I would read through my Moleskine notebook, in which \u2014 burdened by my noble calling \u2014 I had recorded the terrible scenes witnessed that day. I did not imagine \u2014 with the greatest respect to Yves Saint Laurent \u2014 testing lipstick shades in the home counties. Thus it is that a man reaches an age where he realises he will never be a footballer, and will never leave a string of mistresses across the Orient as he hitches dusty lifts in Land Rovers in pursuit of man\u2019s inhumanity to man. <\/p>\n

What about the notebook, though? Even in a digital age? There is no shortage of electronic notepaper on the market. What I would like, though, is electronic notepaper with the emphasis more on the \u201cnotepaper\u201d bit than the \u201celectronic\u201d. I don\u2019t want a rigid screen that behaves like a marginally more sophisticated Etch A Sketch. This is where Moleskine\u2019s Smart Writing Set comes in. It looks, and is, almost exactly like a Moleskine \u2014 beloved by eminent writers and people who would like to be eminent writers. What is different is not the paper, but the pen. Instead of a rigid \u201cdocument\u201d, recording what I write with a stylus, I have a real notebook, on which a pen really writes \u2014 but then a tiny camera on the pen records it for an app. The result is a set of notes that are, literally, just notes. The pen will upload these to an app that will record and save the page (if you use a non-Moleskine page you will learn that part of the magic comes from tiny dots that triangulate its position for the camera) \u2014 and, if wanted, convert your scrawl into typewritten text. Now all I need is the ceiling fan.
Details \u00a3229, Moleskine<\/p>\n

\"aGarmin Varia radar bicycle light<\/p>\n

The first time the Luftwaffe managed to miniaturise a radar so it could fit on a plane, it caused such a panic that in 1942 the RAF sent up a bomber as bait. The poor pilot had to allow a German night-fighter to get so close they could hear the pings of its radar and then fly level so the British radio operator could transmit its characteristics to HQ while shells smashed into its fuselage. When the RAF miniaturised its own radar, the device was considered so war-changing, a special delegation took it across the Atlantic to present to the Americans. I happen, oddly, to be researching these incidents for a book when I take delivery of the Garmin Varia RCT715: a rear bike light. As well as red light, it shines light waves from far into the invisible part of the spectrum \u2014 the light we use for radar. As cars approach from behind, these waves bounce back and are registered. I get advance warning I am about to be overtaken on a display on my phone attached to my handlebars. Ostensibly, the range is 140m but seems a fair bit further. If the cars are gaining fast, the screen displays them with more urgency. If they appear to be behaving dangerously, I can set it to take a video. Here, on a pedal bicycle, I have a device that, were it around 80 years ago, could have probably knocked six months off the war. I am using it to fight my own more modern battle: between the glorious Mamil forces and the evil armies of the internal combustion engine.
Details \u00a3299.99, Garmin <\/p>\n

\"aAdidas Adizero Adios Pro 3 trainers<\/p>\n

Is there such a thing as a foot placebo? Can a leg become bouncier just through the power of suggestion? I ask because when I put on the Adidas Adizero, I just feel springier. Despite being a grumpy sports-brand sceptic \u2014 my last trainers came from Primark and I annoy acquaintances at parties by sneering at people who buy graphene tennis rackets \u2014 I can\u2019t help but think I\u2019m going a little further with each stride, or that the hilly section of my run feels a little less hilly. This is, of course, precisely the stated intention of these trainers.<\/p>\n

They are the latest addition to the world\u2019s shoe rack of super-shoes, with carbon plates in their soles to give runners the edge. The first were Nike\u2019s Vaporfly, made famous by Eliud Kipchoge\u2019s attempts on the two-hour marathon. Other brands followed and last year Adidas\u2019s Adizero line received the most wins in the World Major Marathons. Let us assume then that the springiness really does come from my super-shoes, rather than from my brain telling my foot I am wearing super-shoes. Does it even matter? I am not an international-standard athlete; I am a middle-aged tech columnist. I don\u2019t run to break a two-hour marathon; I run to postpone death. And yet, I also run to clear my mind and feel energised. As my daily jog continues on its now familiar route, I feel a little less tired, a little more enthused. I am an urban gazelle, pogoing along the pavement, running towards an imaginary finish line. I am, briefly, a middle-aged tech columnist allowing myself to imagine what it would be like to be someone who needed carbon plates in his trainers.
Details \u00a3140, Adidas <\/p>\n

\"aArcade1Up Infinity game table<\/p>\n

Schr\u00f6dinger had his cat \u2014 the cat that was both alive and dead. Plutarch had the Ship of Theseus \u2014 the ship that was both new and old. I have my own philosophical metaphor: the games table that is both a wholesome family board game and a less wholesome computer screen. It is the last day of school holidays. It is raining. We have entered a deathly ennui. Children roll around the house purposelessly like a damp fog, appearing periodically to ask for food. I am not wholly sure if all of them even got dressed yesterday. Today, however, they are miraculously energised. Next door, as I at last manage to work, they are playing chess. Later, they will spend several hours on Monopoly. After years of telling them to play a board game, instead of pestering me to play Minecraft, here they are, doing so voluntarily. It is like they have swapped brains with a child of the 1950s. <\/p>\n

And yet, there is a niggle. They are indeed playing the games, but they are doing so on the Infinity game table: a touchscreen with dozens of classic games built in, from Scrabble to Guess Who?. Does this count as a screen? Does it matter? Does asking the question itself show the utter absurdity of our screen prejudices, proving I am just bound by the ridiculous mores and middle-class guilt of my time? Maybe parents of the 1950s pointlessly tortured themselves by denying their children board games in favour of Latin translation? Or perhaps I\u2019m kidding myself. Perhaps by pretending this noisy table with a noisy screen is anything other than a computer game, I\u2019m philosophising my way out of my own lax parenting. Then again, my kids are happy, I\u2019m working, and next door I can hear they\u2019ve moved on to Hungry Hungry Hippos. Maybe I should give myself a break.
Details \u00a3749, Game<\/p>\n

\"aGozney Dome outdoor oven<\/p>\n

\u201cDo you,\u201d my wife asks, \u201cfeel connected to your manliness?\u201d I\u2019m in the garden, positioning a kiln-dried log beside a seared salmon in a \u00a31,600 glorified barbecue. Survival-wise it\u2019s not exactly Bear Grylls. Not least because, just in case the logs are too onerous to light, there\u2019s a gas canister at my feet. And yet, the honest answer is: I do. Cooking is never just about making food hot. It\u2019s a social, almost anthropological, process. I\u2019m controlling fire and making food. I\u2019m a hunter-gatherer, albeit one for whom both parts of the process were delegated to Ocado. There is an inherent tension in selling outdoor cooking equipment. Make it too hard and it\u2019s raw chicken and charcoal sausages. Make it too easy and the customer can get overwhelmed by the absurdity: why not just use an oven?<\/p>\n

Despite all its bells and whistles \u2014 temperature gauge, ash collection, back-up gas \u2014 the Gozney Dome doesn\u2019t make it too easy. It takes time to heat it up. When I get impatient and put too many logs on, it takes even longer to cool down. I accidentally hit 400C and the only way to get it to 200C faster is to take out burning logs. The recipe, supplied by Gozney, calls for the salmon to gain its smokiness through being cooked on a cedar plank, with me on hand to tamp down any flames. On a normal Tuesday evening I could have put the salmon on, taken it out when ready and read the paper in between. But sometimes cooking isn\u2019t just about cooking; it\u2019s about ritual, process and fire. On a normal Tuesday evening I wouldn\u2019t be here in the sun, my children playing, my wife teasing me, and me feeling ever so slightly more manly.
Details \u00a31,619.99, Gozney<\/p>\n

\"aLeica M11 camera<\/p>\n

The latest Leica is, I have no doubt, an absolutely superb camera. The pictures, even when taken by me, are beautiful. The functionality \u2014 many buttons, many menu options, many twiddly mechanical bits \u2014 is legion. For those who want (again like me) to merely point and click, it is also not overwhelming: if you ignore all the twiddliness, this camera points and clicks with aplomb (and, indeed, with a satisfyingly mechanical click). But the quality of the technology is not really why people buy a Leica. Nor is it why I am starting to think about things like \u201ccomposition\u201d and \u201cexposure\u201d as I use it.<\/p>\n

Leicas are to cameras as Moleskines are to notebooks. Pick up a Moleskine and you are Hemingway, pondering the snows of Kilimanjaro. Pick up a Leica and you are Cartier-Bresson, about to tour the Maghreb. They are as much a statement of artistic intent as a tool. The latest iteration can take pictures at 60 megapixel resolution, allow you to see them and control settings on a large touchscreen, then save them on a hard drive and removable memory. Its ISO range is, apparently, superb. That\u2019s all great, if you know what an ISO range is. But really it\u2019s about the classic lines, the studiedly retro shell, and the feeling that you are about to be the next great of photojournalism. Even if, for all the ISO range, when I look back through the pictures, it\u2019s just shaky shots of my toddler with both eyes shut and my six-year-old looking the other way.
Details \u00a37,800, Leica<\/p>\n

\"aBlunt Metro umbrella<\/p>\n

Sometimes, climbing in winter at Cairn Gorm, the sleet will hit you the moment you open the door in the car park. It will continue, unrelenting, until you reach the cliffs. You can hunch your shoulders and pull down your hat, but there will always be exposed skin, to be blasted by the horizontal slush. In these circumstances, as I \u201cenjoy\u201d my chosen hobby, I haven\u2019t often wondered why I\u2019m not using an umbrella. But maybe I should have. Climbers don\u2019t typically use umbrellas. Partly this is because they fancy themselves manly and rugged sorts, whose walking accessories are restricted to ice axes and crampons. Partly it\u2019s because umbrellas are not terribly practical. Once, on Ben Nevis, the wind was so strong I had to crawl. How could an umbrella resist that?<\/p>\n

Blunt claims its designs are able to survive hurricane-force winds. Can they? I take one to Cairn Gorm to find out. Once again I am greeted by Scotland in all its frozen, sandblasting glory. This time, though, I have my umbrella. Walking up the valley, I have a shield from the sleet. Trekking to the base, it does sometimes go inside out, but recovers quickly without apparent damage. An ordinary umbrella would have been shredded. The manufacturer claims it\u2019s designed to absorb forces more evenly, with special attention to the structure around the tip of each rib, where tears and breaks typically happen. It backs this up with a two-year guarantee. Although, perfectly reasonably, this does not cover the other big attrition on umbrellas \u2014 leaving them on the train.
Details \u00a375, Blunt <\/p>\n

\"aLouis Vuitton speaker<\/p>\n

Is it, one friend asked, an electronic astrolabe? Or, perhaps, could it be a steampunk incense burner, an unholy thurible anointing your house with the scent of capitalism? Then I tap on my phone to play some country and western music and the object\u2019s true purpose is identified and, somehow, insulted. It is a speaker. Specifically, it is a Louis Vuitton Horizon bluetooth light-up speaker. And, with its swishy lead and its bright LED display, it is the sort of speaker that one suspects would be affronted by playing Johnny Cash. This is a speaker for Beyonc\u00e9 singing about diamond rings, Big Brovaz singing about their favourite things. It is big, brash and bling. With its lighting and jeweling, it is not some discreet speaker to play Bach in a minimalist living room. It is built to be noticed. When it starts up, it flashes its display at you. When it plays, the lights dance along. If it were a dog, it would be Paris Hilton\u2019s chihuahua. If it were a car, it would be Kanye West\u2019s Hummer. A confession: I\u2019m more of a labrador and Volvo kind of guy. But that\u2019s fine, I can appreciate that this is a glorious and unapologetic example of the sort of speaker that a different me would bring to a beach party, its strap clutched between my ring-adorned knuckles, R&B cued up on my phone, another night of partying to come.
Details \u00a32,590, Louis Vuitton<\/p>\n

\"aOwl Labs Meeting Owl Pro<\/p>\n

No surveillance equipment can be sinister if it hoots. The meeting owl does just that, and to add to its unthreatening cuteness it does so from behind endearing blinking eyes. Although, I don\u2019t actually hear my owl\u2019s hoot or see its eyes, because it is many miles away in an office that I generally try not to visit. The point of the owl that it is a proxy version of me, sitting in the office in my stead. So when it hoots to announce it is on, it is my bosses who hear. And after it does so, I, like an owl, have a 360-degree view of the office. The pandemic has taught us that a lot can be done remotely. It has also taught us that doing so is a compromise. The owl is an attempt to make it less of one. It plugs into a laptop to act as its camera, then when you use that computer to log into teleconferencing software, it transmits an owl\u2019s-eye view to anyone signing in remotely. Using it is as simple as selecting \u201cowl\u201d from a dropdown menu. The idea is that if there\u2019s a physical meeting, it can sit in the middle of it, like a Zoom camera with a full panoramic view, focusing on the speaker. It gives the feeling of being in the meeting \u2014 albeit in the centre of the table, beside the triangular sandwiches, and hooting occasionally. Does the owl mean that I no longer need to be physically present? Can this replace my commute? It\u2019s great tech and does exactly what it should. But when I finally go into the office, I learn the owl is stored in a news editor\u2019s bottom drawer, alongside old clippings and office detritus. There\u2019s a metaphor there somewhere.
Details \u00a31,049, Owl Labs<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There are some things in life that are tricky to figure out. For instance, where the dog has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":255362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17],"tags":[49,48,195,61],"class_list":{"0":"post-255361","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-gadgets","8":"tag-ca","9":"tag-canada","10":"tag-gadgets","11":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=255361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/255361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/255362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=255361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=255361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=255361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}