If your favorite person has a love of video or photography, a camera may be the best gift they’ll ever get. Some may want to capture their adventures with an action camera, while others may desire a mirrorless camera for portraits, movies or artistic shots. The technology is better than ever as camera makers try to stay ahead of smartphones with faster shooting speeds, sharper video and incredible autofocus. We found the best models for budgets ranging from $400 to $2,500, along with top accessories to complement their existing gear.
GoPro Hero 10 Black
Will Lipman Photography for Engadget
For the adventurer on your gift list, there’s no better action camera than the GoPro Hero 10 Black. It bests the previous Hero 9 Black model in a number of key ways, thanks mainly to the faster GP2 processor. That helps it deliver improved image quality, with higher resolution at up to 5.3K/30fps instead of 5K as before. It also offers improved noise reduction, smoother stabilization, more faithful color reproduction and better handling.
Sony’s A6100 is a great gift idea for budding photographers, as it offers the best features of its APS-C mirrorless camera series at the best price. Chief among those is the incredibly reliable autofocus system with eye-detection and other AI tricks. Even with fast-moving action, the A6100 will nail focus for video or photos most of the time thanks to the extremely rapid tracking system. It also offers accurate colors, good low-light performance and a flip-up display that allows for selfies and vlogging, with sharp video capture at up to 4K. It’s also one of the best mirrorless camera deals around at $748, or $848 with a 16-50mm kit lens.
A gimbal is a great gift idea for video shooters, helping them boost production value with smooth tracking, panning and other shots. If your loved one has a mirrorless camera, the best option is DJI’s Ronin-SC model. It weighs just 2.4 pounds, 41 percent lighter than DJI’s original Ronin-S — making it easier to use for longer periods. It can stabilize just about any type of video as well, thanks to the ActiveTrack 3.0 mode and AI that can lock onto and track human or other subjects.
If your gift recipient is into making YouTube videos, the Panasonic GH5 has been the vlogging camera of choice since it first came out . The 20-megapixel Micro Four Thirds sensor delivers pin-sharp 4K video downsampled from the full sensor at up to 60fps, with a 10-bit high-color option that makes editing easier afterwards. It also includes other necessities for vlogging like a flip-out display, in-body stabilization and dual high-speed card slots. With the arrival of the $1,700 GH5 II, the original GH5 is cheaper than it’s ever been at $1,300, giving your loved one a lot of camera for the money.
If your giftee is starting to get serious about video, the Magnus VT 4000 is the best budget tripod option out there. It’s lightweight at 8 pounds, but the anodized aluminum construction is strong enough to handle a mirrorless camera and accessories weighing up to 8.8 pounds. The lack of heft makes it practical for travel, while the fluid head allows for smooth tilts and pans. Other features include a middle spreader to keep things steady and legs that extend up to 64 inches so you can match the eyeline of your subjects.
For a serious camera gift that’s around $2,500, Canon’s 20-megapixel EOS R6 is the best hybrid model out there. It delivers up to 20 fps burst shooting speeds while the Dual Pixel AF nails focus on nearly every shot, whether in bright sunlight or dim lighting. It’s also a solid pick for video, letting you shoot 4K supersampled video at 60 fps with 10-bit log and HDR options for maximum editing flexibility — again, with Canon’s Dual Pixel AF system that’s second to none. The caveat to that is overheating, which limits use for things like weddings and journalism.
Some of the most useful gifts out there for vloggers are Joby’s famous mini-tripods, and the best one for the money is the GorillaPod 3K. Attaching your camera using the secure clip-in mounting plate is dead simple, and you can ensure that everything is even with the built-in level. The flexible legs let you set your camera anywhere to shoot or even wrap it around a tree or other object. The most common usage is as a vlogging handle, as vloggers can bend the legs forward to fit themselves into the video and steady out their shooting.
Your favorite camera nerd can never have enough memory cards, but they can be a pretty pricey gift. SanDisk’s ExtremePro UHS-I SD cards are cheaper than UHS-II cards, but the 90 MB/s read/write speeds are fast enough for most types of photography and video. If your loved one needs that extra UHS-II speed, Lexar’s UHS-II SD 1667X (250MB/s) and 2000X (300MB/s) SD cards are solid picks.
If the vlogger in your life doesn’t already have one, Rode’s wireless and shotgun microphones are solid, affordable gifts. The VideoMic Go is ideal for interviews and run-and-gun shooting, thanks to the crisp directional audio and relative ease of use. It comes with a shock mount to eliminate bumps or vibrations that could interfere with sound and doesn’t require a battery, unlike past Rode models. Meanwhile, Rode’s Wireless Go is one of the most popular wireless lavalier mics out there, functioning as both a microphone and wireless transceiver. It offers a reliable connection and good audio quality, or you can maximize clarity by connecting an external 3.5mm microphone like Rode’s $40 SmartLav+, the Sennheiser Pro Audio ME2 or others.
A good light is an awesome tool in your favorite photographer or videographer’s arsenal, and a relatively affordable gift to boot. One of the best all-around models is the Nanlite LitoLite 5C RGBWW Mini LED Panel. It weighs just 4.8 ounces, but offers dimmable lighting across a range of colors, with adjustments either on the fixture or via a smartphone app. It mounts on any wall or light stand via a magnet or quarter-inch threads, has cordless operation and a battery that runs for 1.5 hours at full power (charged via USB). The most interesting feature is special effects that range from a cop car’s flashing lights, flames, candlelights, a lightning storm and more.
Backpacks are life for photographers and video shooters, so they make great gifts — if you get the right one. Peak Design’s Everyday Backpack 20L is a good choice, thanks to the stylish weatherproof design, internal dividers for laptops, cameras, lenses and more, a wrap-around zipper and a protected laptop sleeve. It offers excellent build quality and Peak Design backs that up with a lifetime warranty.
As someone who used to use Adobe’s Premiere Pro CC exclusively, I never thought I’d switch to another app. I did, though, and can’t recommend Blackmagic Design’s DaVinci Resolve 17.2 enough (either the free or $295 studio version). You get a lifetime of updates, so it’s far cheaper than Adobe’s subscription program that runs $630 per year. Resolve is slightly trickier to learn, but far more powerful than Premiere for key tasks like color grading and effects. Most importantly, I’ve found Resolve to be far, far more reliable than Premiere on a wide range of computers, which is easily the most important “feature” on an editing app.
Fitbit's most capable fitness and health tracker, the Charge 5, is thinner, lighter and less bulky than the Charge 4, but it's also $30 more. However, Amazon is now making it more palatable by offering its first discount, selling it for $130 in Black/Graphite for a discount of 28 percent, or $50 off the regular price.
The Charge 5 earned a solid Engadget review score of 82, thanks to features like a built-in GPS, on-board health sensors for stress monitoring, a full-color touchscreen, Fitbit Pay and multi-day battery life. With rounded edges, a soft-touch band and 10 percent thinner design, we also found it to be more comfortable than before. The main drawbacks are a lack of music playback from the screen, limited on-device apps and no compatibility with Apple Health or Google Fit.
Engadget
If you need something simpler, cheaper and a bit more stylish, Amazon also has the Fitbit Luxe on sale. It's now available for $100 rather than $150 in Lunar White/Soft Gold or Black/Graphite, for a savings of $50 or 33 percent.
The Fitbit Luxe also received an 82 in our Engadget review, offering benefits like a slim and comfortable design, capable health tracking and good battery life. It's also ideal for folks with small wrists thanks to the dainty size, narrow width and shape that's "inspired by the human body," as Fitbit describes it. The drawback is a tiny touchscreen that can be hard to read and manipulate. Still, considering it offers many features only available in its smartwatches, it offers a good balance between size and functionality.
It’s that time of the year again: Figuring out all of the best gifts to buy from our Holiday Gift Guide. This week, Commerce Editor Valentina Palladino joins Cherlynn and Devindra to chat about our latest batch of product suggestions, as well as some tips on snagging deals ahead of Black Friday. Also, they chat about Microsoft’s intriguing new $249 Surface Laptop SE, a low-spec, kid-focused notebook for schools. And Devindra chats with Ethan Zuckerman, a UMASS Amherst professor and technology researcher, about Facebook/Meta’s vision of the metaverse and ways we can combat corporate control of the internet. (Check out Ethan’s article at The Atlantic: Hey Facebook, I Built a Metaverse 27 Years Ago.)
Listen below, or subscribe on your podcast app of choice. If you've got suggestions or topics you'd like covered on the show, be sure to email us or drop a note in the comments! And be sure to check out our other podcasts, the Morning After and Engadget News!
Metaverse interview with Ethan Zuckerman – 1:07:26
Video livestream
Credits Hosts: Cherlynn Low and Devindra Hardawar Guest: Valentina Palladino Producer: Ben Ellman Livestream producers: Julio Barrientos,Luke Brooks Graphics artists: Luke Brooks, Kyle Maack Music: Dale North and Terrence O'Brien
Between 2016 and 2019, retro gaming had a moment. I mean anothermoment. A very specific one where gaming’s greatest all released “mini” versions of their most iconic consoles. NES? Yep. SNES? Sure. Genesis? You bet and, of course, Sony, SNK, Konami and even Commodore (sorta) got in on the trend too.
Then there was Evercade in 2020 — a refreshingly different take on the new-but-old console idea. Instead of a “mini” version of vintage hardware, it was a new handheld that took cartridges. Each cartridge contained a collection of classic games from different developers. I enjoyed it when I reviewed it.
The idea of potentially unlimited games through actual cartridges was both clever and brave (retro gamers aren’t so known for paying for titles, especially the lesser-known “gems” that Evercade was able to license). Either way, the idea must have caught on as the company soon revealed plans for a more traditional home console version. It’s finally here and it brings a few interesting perks over its handheld sibling.
The Evercade VS (as the $99 system is called) shares the same cartridge format as the handheld, so you won’t need to re-buy anything. In fact, you can play on one, save your game and pick it up on the other (just like you’d hope, to be fair). It’s worth mentioning that two titles (both Namco collections) are only compatible with the handheld due to licensing issues.
James Trew / Engadget
There are other perks to the home-based console, too. Most notably support for multiplayer (up to four players where games support it), WiFi for over-the-air updates and a jazzy new interface. Oh, and the VS can hold two cartridges at a time, meaning you can be working on one game and leave it there while you play another, or simply just have more games to choose from on your home screen at any one time — handy given that every single cartridge Evercade offers is a multicart. The carts are even hot-swappable so you don’t need to restart the system, just slot a new one right in and away you go.
As is tradition with this new wave of retro home consoles, the VS is small and light. So light, you’ll definitely want to make sure your HDMI cable has some slack in it, else it’ll lift the VS off the ground or pull it back behind your TV. The good news is that almost any USB port will power it. My not-very-good seven year-old LG TV can easily power the VS through its USB ports meaning I don’t have to occupy another outlet.
The VS looks like a direct relative of the original Evercade with the same vintage white and red decals with a dash of gray here and there for buttons. One nice little touch is the NES-style “flap” that covers the cartridge slots. This does mean you don’t get the old-school vibes of having a cartridge poking out the top, but at least your games are safely hidden from the elements. But homages to old consoles like that seem to matter to fans of the classics. It weirdly matters a lot. Even if that’s the laborious ritual of having to get off the couch to change the games or power it down. Nostalgia isn’t always about the good things.
Fire the VS up and you’ll be presented with a Netflix-like menu of all the titles on whatever cartridges are inserted. The handheld, with its limited screen size, had you flip through each title one by one. Here, they’re laid out in rows with full cover art. Click through and you’ll be presented a little more info about the game and its controls along with the option to play it (naturally) or pick up where you left off with your most recent save.
Blaze
Evercade has tried to strike a balance between modern features and retro authenticity. Save states are one modern concession but most other things — such as cheat codes or in-game recording — are absent. The same goes for the visual look and feel. Under the settings menu, you have three display options: Original Ratio, Pixel Perfect and Full Screen. It’s always nice to have options as modern TVs are very different to what you might have plugged the original hardware into.
You can, of course, add scanlines (if you must). There are also some options for different themes and backgrounds etc. But all-told the menu is simple and clear and all the better for it.
When the handheld launched, the library of cartridges and games was decent but modest. There were collections from mainstays like Atari, Namco and Interplay. These held some classics like Pac-Man, Earthworm Jim and Crystal Castles. Then there were bundles from newer developers that have scooped up various IPs over the years. These tend to hold more “hidden gems” like Piko’s Dragon View (a solid RPG first published by Kemco). In fact the VS comes bundled with two of these collections to get you going (one from Data East and one from Technos).
Along with these well-known and lesser-known golden oldies are some collections of new 8- and 16-bit games. The net result is that the Evercade had the foundations to become something of an all-inclusive retro experience with new and old titles side-by-side. Now, with the Evercade VS, the company has added a new line of arcade-first collections denoted by their purple (rather than red) packaging. Here you’ll find button-mashers like Double Dragon 2 and Bad Dudes vs DragonNinja to further round out the library.
James Trew / Engadget
One intriguing option in the menu is “Secret.” Here you’ll be asked to enter a code. What the code/s is/are is, well, a secret, but one can presume it unlocks some extra games or content. Along the same theme, there are hidden games on the console itself a-la Snail Maze on the Sega Master System.
And… there are more things to unlock, too. Evercade has hinted that certain cartridge combinations, when inserted together, will unlock hidden titles. I was able to find two such secret games with the cartridges I have here, and there are definitely more. I won’t spoil things by saying exactly how you find them, but the UI will let you know. It’s subtle though.
Each cartridge says how many games are in the collection on the front, so if both have 10, the UI might say 21. Then you might have to check the back of the box to find which game that’s now in your list isn’t officially mentioned on either cartridge’s box. Thanks to the VS’s WiFi connection, this is theoretically something that can be expanded over time, too. A nice, fun touch nonetheless — especially for collectors.
James Trew / Engadget
One minor nitpick might be the controller: Your mileage may vary due to different physiology, but it isn’t my favorite. The general design is fine and comfortable, but it doesn’t feel quite as ergonomic as the handheld or other controllers to me. Also the in-game menu button doubles as the pause button, which can be a little confusing if, like me, you find yourself reaching for Start.
On the plus side, there are now four shoulder buttons instead of the handheld’s two and the cables are plenty long enough to reach across most living rooms. You can, of course, use the handheld as an extra controller, but it needs a specific cable — I tried the USB cable that came in the box and, no dice. That cable is about $10, while an additional controller is about $20, so it’s worth weighing up the benefit before deciding which way to go. The VS also supports basically any standard USB controller, so if you have one laying around that you like, you can use that at the expense of retro authenticity.
All in all, the Evercade VS is a pleasant surprise. The cartridge-based model will always be appealing to some and a deterrent to others. But for those that love rarities and a good dollop of nostalgia, the Evercade ecosystem is shaping up to be more than just a gimmick. With the recent wave of new indie games also making it to the platform it could find itself being a vibrant platform for new games, too. One where indie developers can not only enjoy seeing their games have a physical release, but find new audiences, and that’s never a bad thing.
After being on hold while Microsoft launched the Xbox Series X and S consoles, Xbox Design Lab returned this summer. Unfortunately, rubberized grips and other options that were available before were nowhere to be found. Now, Xbox Design Lab has announced that rubberized grips and metallic color finishes are back, along with some all new additions.
Black rubberized grips are now available for the side grips and back case, and you can choose from 19 metallic finish colors. Those include three types of silver (sterling, pewter and gunmetal) along with more exotic shades like Deep Pink, Oxide Red, Zest Orange, Gold, Electric Volt, Velocity Green and Glacier Blue.
Xbox Design Lab also introduced three new regular colors on top of the 18 already available: Dragonfly Blue, Nocturnal Green and Velocity Green. The latter two were updated from Nocturnal Green and Velocity Green, which are no longer on option. It also launched "inspired by" controller designers from Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, Battlefield 2042, Forza Horizon 5, and Riders Republic.
The new options bring Design Lab back to where it was before, with literally millions of combinations possible. As before, you'll see a nice 3D rendering of the product each time you add an option, to help make sure your final product doesn't look like hot garbage. The controllers start at $70 and up, though "pricing may vary for additional options" like the rubberized grips, Microsoft points out. You can custom design your controller here.
A debate between lawyers and Judge Schroeder in the trial of Kyle Rittenhouse focused on pinching-to-zoom on an iPad, a feature that’s been on Apple devices since 2007's iPod Touch.
Thomas Binger, the assistant district attorney leading the prosecution, planned to play a video on an iPad, showing Rittenhouse shooting Joseph Rosenbaum. When the assistant DA said he’d use a zoom function on the iPad, the defense lawyers objected, claiming an iPad's pinch-to-zoom function could modify footage of the incident, "creating what it thinks is there, not what necessarily is there."
This lead to the onus being on the prosecution to show the imagery remained in its "virginal state," not on the defense to prove manipulation. Pinch-to-zoom on all devices may use algorithms, but only to scale the image — it doesn't change the content itself.
According to The New York Times, Binger said zooming in on images on devices is a routine part of daily life that all jurors would understand and asked for an adjournment, which was denied. The judge ordered a 15-minute recess, suggesting that Mr. Binger could “within minutes” get someone to testify regarding the accuracy of the zoomed-in video.
It will build a million fewer units than it forecast earlier, according to a report.
Sony's PlayStation 5 may not be able to beat the PS4's first year sales record due to an ongoing component shortage, according to Bloomberg. The company has reportedly cut its production forecast of 16 million down to 15 million, putting its target of 14.8 million PS5 sales by March in jeopardy, if the report is accurate. It also makes a bad situation worse for anyone hoping to pick up a PS5 over the holidays.
The ASUS ProArt StudioBook 16 OLED appeals to some of the most demanding creators, with a stunning color-accurate 4K OLED display and ASUS dial to control Adobe Creative Cloud apps. There’s a lot packed into this machine to ensure it can compete with desktop machines, offering excellent performance for video and photo editing, 3D apps and more thanks to the RTX 3070 GPU, AMD Ryzen 9 eight-core CPU and high-speed NVMe SSD. It’s fluid, fast and offers good battery life. The main downside is the high-tech but currently useless SD Express card reader.
Enough careful advice, it’s time for Engadget’s editors to talk about what they’d love to get for the holidays. And we’re a bunch with diverse interests. Our suggestions cover Tamagotchis, sex toys, massage guns and flip-phones.
You won't need new hardware for any of the new features.
HTC has updated its excellent but expensive Vive Focus 3 business-focused headset with a much larger play area, WiFi 6E and more. The software update comes with no change in hardware as HTC "secretly built in the 6E required hardware from day 1," tweeted HTC's global head of hardware products, Shen Ye.
We’ve reported on this intriguing handheld’s delays at least five times. What’s six between friends? The company announced the delay Thursday, attributing it to a “critical” battery issue it discovered late in the process of manufacturing the first 20,000 production units of the console. “We made the difficult, expensive call to replace all of our existing batteries with new ones from a totally different battery supplier,” said Panic’s Cabel Sasser. The company says the new power cell features “much better” battery life than the previous one. So at least there’s that.
In the space of a few years, we’ve gone from 5W USB adapters being the norm, to iPads and Nintendo Switches being able to charge at 18W, all the way up to modern laptops drawing up to 140W. This explosion in charging rates over a (somewhat) standardized USB-C connector has been great for consumers who can now mostly charge their stuff with one or two well-positioned adapters. But, it’s made choosing the right power bank to keep all of your devices topped up on the go way more difficult.
Enter Elecjet, a small company which has been carving out a niche for itself by using graphene in adapters and power banks. It launched its first “graphene-enhanced battery power bank,” on Indiegogo back in 2019, and is now back with the Elecjet Apollo Ultra. It’s a 37Wh (10,000mAh) power bank with a couple of notable specs: It can be charged at 100W, and can output at up to 87W across its two ports.
These numbers are very high. On the output side, most 10,000mAh battery packs top out at around 18W; it’s only chunkier chargers that reach figures like 65W. On the input side of things, you’re looking at around 30W as the peak for a high-end portable charger. (There is a market for “laptop power stations,” which can meet and in some cases best Elecjet’s input and output numbers, but those are typically bulky units.)
My personal power bank at the moment is a 20,000mAh Anker PowerCore, which maxes out at around 25W output and 30W input. Although it’s double the capacity of the graphene model, after about a month of using a pre-production unit Elecjet sent me, I don’t want to go back.
Before I get into that, what does a “graphene-enhanced battery” even mean? Elecjet takes the lithium cells that are inside every device nowadays, and plays with the chemistry. Its “composite graphene cells,” mix a graphene solution in with the lithium in the cathode, and then add some layers of graphene coating the anode.
What you get from this sprinkling of graphene is much improved performance at the expense of size. Thanks to offering lower resistance and higher thermal conductivity, Elecjet’s graphene-lithium composite cells can theoretically be charged five times faster, and run through five times more charge cycles, but are about 25 percent less energy dense than regular lithium. So, composite graphene batteries are faster and run cooler, but will either have a lower capacity or a larger size when compared to the batteries we’re used to.
I’m not really close to pushing the Apollo Ultra to its stated 87W limit. The devices I need to charge on the regular are an iPhone 12, a Nintendo Switch and an M1 MacBook Air. It happily charges my Nintendo Switch at 18W, my iPhone at 20W, and my MacBook Air at around 45W.
That last figure is actually higher than the charger that came with the MacBook Air, but on plugging in a 65W Apple charger from a MacBook Pro, I saw essentially the same figure, so it appears that’s a safe rate for the battery. I did run some tests on a friend’s 13-inch MacBook Pro, though, and found it was able to charge it at a similar speed to the 65W charger that device came with, so I have no reason to doubt the output claims.
Speaking of claims, this is nitpicking to the extreme, but the Apollo Ultra’s USB-C port outputs at up to 65W, and its USB-A port can handle 18W. With the PPS power spec it can output at 68.25W, but none of these combinations add up to the claimed 87W output figure.
Output aside, the main benefit for me is how fast you can charge the battery itself. I’m quite forgetful, and will often be getting ready to leave the house with my phone on low battery, and then go to pick up my power bank only to find out it’s empty. I’m sure that’ll still happen, because if I haven’t learned in 36 years to prepare for life adequately I’m not about to change now. But being able to charge the Apollo Ultra so quickly has meant it’s really not an issue. Plugging it in for about 6-7 minutes gives me enough juice to charge my iPhone from the red up to 100 percent, and honestly even a couple of minutes before I run out of the door has got me home without my phone dying on me. Although the pre-production units are limited to 87W input (and so took about 35 minutes to charge), the final, 100W edition will charge from 0 to full in under half an hour. It’s like a safety net for my own stupidity.
Its small size, at least in comparison to my regular power bank, is also a plus. At 130 x 68mm, Elecjet’s bank has roughly the same footprint as an iPhone 13 mini, and it’s about 17mm thick. It’s totally pocketable for most folks, or at the least jacket-pocketable, which is not something I can say about my Anker. It’s also, in my opinion, pretty attractive for a power bank, with nice quality white and black plastics, and a proper display that shows the battery percentage. After years of divining how much power is left with four little LEDs, having so many degrees of precision is very nice.
For everything I love about its size and build quality, there’s no getting around the fact that the Apollo Ultra’s overall capacity is quite low. It can handle about two thirds of a MacBook Air’s charge, two and a bit Switch charges, or three-ish charges of a modern smartphone. That’s… absolutely fine. But the benefits of being able to charge something at 65W are somewhat limited when the battery drains in 35 minutes at that rate.
What I really want is impossible with today’s tech: Something this size, just as performant, but double the capacity. In the future, Elecjet says it will be able to make the power module smaller to mitigate the density issue, and it also claims it has “ a new battery under the wraps” that can get far closer to the density of regular cells.
In the meantime, it would be great to see Elecjet expand its current Apollo Ultra range to include larger capacity batteries. Some options would be good, so buyers can pick the compromise that suits them. A 55Wh battery pack would only be 50 percent larger, but handle a wider variety of devices. Even a 75Wh battery would only be double the volume.
Judging the pricing Elecjet has opted for is difficult. The Apollo Ultra is on Indiegogo at $65, which is honestly the most expensive I’ve seen a battery pack of this capacity in recent memory. But it behaves more like the ultra-high end battery packs that go for $100+, and unlike those fits in my jeans pocket. But it doesn’t last as long as those— you see my problem. I think $65 is a reasonable price for what you get here. It’s a sleek, cool-looking thing, and the fast-charging makes it more useful to me than a “regular” larger-capacity battery pack.
As with all Indiegogo products, there’s a big caveat in that you are not buying a product that currently exists. Production will begin shortly, and users backing today should expect their devices in early 2022. I have a working unit on my desk, so I’m confident that Elecjet can deliver a power bank as advertised. But the company’s past Indiegogo campaigns do lead to even more caveats.
Both the Elecjet Apollo and Apollo Max campaigns had issues. A few users reported exploding power banks, others never received their units and, perhaps worst of all, users who complained through the Indiegogo campaigns were left without answers for months or in a couple of cases years. All of the complaints have now been addressed, but only in the past few days leading up to the launch of the new product.
Elecjet merged with another company named Real Graphene earlier this year. Both companies were founded by the same person, Samuel Gong, a UC Berkeley engineering graduate, but Gong says he was not involved in the day-to-day operations of Elecjet until the two merged. When I asked about the complaints surrounding prior campaigns, Gong acknowledged that “there were some issues with the previous products’ quality,” and said most people who didn’t receive their product failed to provide a shipping address through Indiegogo. He said the company “was being managed by another team, and previous campaigns and products were done by [that] team.” He added that the new Apollo Ultra was extensively prototyped and has been evaluated by UL (a well-regarded certification company) for safety. (The press pack Elecjet provided touts “8 safety features” and notes the device never exceeded 42C in testing.)
As for not responding to customer support requests, he acknowledged that, after the merger, the company “couldn’t dedicate enough time to previous campaigns.” The reason he gave for the sudden responses to old complaints was that a new team has been hired to manage the Indiegogo campaign, and that team is also aiding backers of old projects from before the new leadership team was around.
I’m extremely into the Elecjet Apollo Ultra. It’s rare that I’m interested, let alone excited, about a product as dull as a power bank, but it’s always good to see something totally new enter any tech space. Those caveats are certainly worrying, though. If you’re not willing to take the risk but are still interested, Elecjet does have its own retail site, and a sizable Amazon presence, for its other products. You could always wait for the product to launch and hit more traditional retail channels (at a slightly inflated price) further down the line.
Starlink has introduced a new user terminal customers can get with their starter kit. As first reported by The Verge, the company now offers a rectangular option (PDF) that's smaller and lighter than its original circular one. Users have to install that antenna on their rooftop or anywhere high up with a clear view of the sky to be able to access its satellite internet.
The original version is a standard dish that's 23-inch wide, but the rectangular version is only 12 inches wide and 19 inches long. It's also only 9.2 pounds, which is almost half the weight of its circular counterpart. The new terminal's smaller form factor could give users more options when it comes to potential locations where they can install it. In addition, the rectangular terminal comes with more accessory options, including a long pole users can simply stick in the ground so they no longer have to mount the antenna on their rooftop.
SpaceX launched Starlink as a beta service in late 2020 and offered customers access to its satellite internet for $99 a month. Users would have to pay $499 on top of that for its hardware kit, though, which includes the antenna, its stand, power supply and a WiFi router. SpaceX President Gwynne Shotwell said in August that the original dish cost $3,000 to produce, and while the company was able to get that down to $1,300, it was still selling the kit at a loss.
Shotwell also said at the time that the terminal it's releasing this year "will cost roughly half" of what its current user terminals cost and that the company may be able to cut that in half again. The Verge notes, however, that the hardware kit is still being sold for $499 even with the rectangular antenna, and SpaceX has yet to reveal whether it will be sold at a lower price in the future. Potential new customers who don't mind paying the same price for it can get the rectangular terminal when they order a kit, so long as they're in the US.
Since the 1970s, the story of the television is one of conquest as it swallowed more and more space in our living rooms. Owning a set wasn’t good enough, we needed a VCR, BetaMax or LaserDisc player to lurk on a nearby shelf. A decade later, a console or home computer would take its place in the orbit of the TV, followed not long after by the cable box. And, in the DVD age, people would take advantage of the affordability of rudimentary 5.1 surround sound to add in an AV Receiver, or Amp, to that ever-growing TV cabinet. And, as TVs got flatter and wider, their integral speakers stopped being up to the job so much that a dedicated sound bar was essential. Throw in a streaming stick or puck, and our TVs have become ecosystems of their own, no longer lurking but dominating our living rooms.
Sky Glass, then, is a reaction against this sprawl, an all-in-one TV, set-top-box and soundbar that promises to eliminate the clutter. Hell, Sky Glass even has its own games pre-installed, although you’ll still need to bring your console along for the serious stuff. It’s also the first true-blue Sky device that doesn’t need a satellite dish for connection, instead delivering all of its content through the internet. That’s a long time coming, too, since Sky has been teasing and promising the launch of a Sky-branded internet-only TV platform for years now (distinct from Now, at least).
In many ways, Sky Glass is the logical end point for the smart TV industry, a set that bakes in everything you need, and keeps you there. It’s also the final step on a long road for content producers as they regain control over what you can watch, and when.
Hardware
Sky
Sky loaned me the 55-inch Glass model in black for two weeks with access to a press account which included Sky Ultimate. It ships in a cardboard box, free from single use plastic as part of the company’s commitment to building a greener device. It ships with a stand that can pull double-duty as a wall mount should you require, which is fiddlier to build than I would have liked. The instructions, printed on the box, are ambiguous enough that I made at least one mistake that led to me disassembling the whole thing and starting again. For the sake of your backs, get help to lift the thing, because it was a feat worthy of a medal just to hoik this thing up and onto my TV table alone.
Most flat-screen TVs try to minimise their bulk, tapering out beyond the area where the power, mainboard and connectivity is sited. That’s not the situation with Sky Glass which is designed as a solid cuboid, lest the cut-out for mounting the stand. This thing looks and feels like an iMac G5 if Jonathan Ive suddenly discovered a penchant for making everything feel solid and immovable. In part, this is because this unit is bigger than the 43-inch TV I own, but it’s more down to the solidity in its design and the built-in soundbar which means that, by default, the hardware suffocates the space that it’s in. Not to brag, but my living room is much bigger than the UK’s average and I’ve caught myself thinking “woof, that is a big TV” several times already.
Getting the thing to work, meanwhile, takes about as long as typing your WiFi password. Once a very quick update is applied, you can be kicking back and watching the box in five minutes.
The system inside Glass is driven by a quad-core AmLogic ARM A55 system-on-chip which only occasionally slows down or stutters. Some of this, I’m sure, is down to being tied to your internet connection for all of your viewing than it is the hardware’s limitations. When watching live football in UHD, I got the odd stutter and black screen, which is something Sky says is a teething issue with the new platform. But don’t be surprised if, when watching on-demand content, rewinding and fast-forwarding video brings a little stutter or two of its very own.
Despite the fact that Sky Glass is designed not to have too many additional components hitched to it, it does pack a trio of HDMI 2.1 ports with support for CEC. One of the ports supports eARC for audio passthrough, but given the system has a soundbar built in it’s unlikely most will need this. In addition, the unit supports Bluetooth 5.0, has a 10/100 Mbps Ethernet port and WiFi 6. A USB-C port lurking round back is for charging only, but will deliver up to 15W should you need to connect a smart device to juice.
Sky
It’s worth noting that Sky offers a “Whole Home” package to accompany Sky Glass, letting you watch TV in other rooms. For that, you will need to pick up a Sky Stream Puck, which costs £50 per unit (plus an additional £10 per-month to enable the feature). Sky didn’t send me a Stream Puck so I can’t say how well it works.
Sky Glass requires a minimum home broadband speed of 15Mbps, a generous (or nonexistent) data cap and a further 5Mbps per Sky Stream Puck you install, up to a maximum of six. Sadly, despite running a maxed out internet service, my viewing was interrupted on one more than one occasion. I had several stutters when watching one football game, and all attempts to watch the Manchester Derby live in 4K were met with a black screen and a message to “Please wait for your programme to load.” When it does work, live sports run about half a minute behind the feed on a standard satellite connection.
Sound and Vision
Every Sky Glass model houses a TP-Vision made, 4K UHD (3,840 x 2,160) Quantum Dot display with a 60Hz refresh rate. It is available in 43- 55-, and 65-inch sizes, and supports HDR 10, Dolby Vision, Hybrid Log Gamma (HLG) and 10-bit color. The first set Sky sent me had some backlight issues, but since its replacement arrived, I’ve had no complaints about the picture quality here, especially when watching gorgeous movies in broad daylight or dark environments. It seems, to me, that you’re getting the best experience you can from a screen like this without making the leap up to an OLED display, which wouldn’t be affordable at this sort of price anyway. The 60Hz panel may give some pause to gamers, as the latest consoles from Sony and Microsoft support 120Hz. There’s also no dedicated ‘game mode’ to reduce latency as you’d find on most regular TVs.
Sky Glass comes with a sextet of speakers buried inside its chassis offering support for 2.1 Stereo, as well as Dolby Atmos and Dolby Digital. There are three forward-firing speakers, two upward-firers as well as a single subwoofer. The company says that the total output of all six is around 215 Watts and promises support for enhanced speech modes. Honestly, in those rare moments when you feel you can indulge your passion for cinema and turn the volume up high, the sound coming out of this thing is plenty good enough for a living room. Sadly, much of the glitz with systems like this is only audible at the sort of volumes that’ll get you knifed by your nearest neighbor. But, overall, the integral soundbar is more than enough to make me wish all TVs had half-decent audio again.
User Interface
When Sky launched Q in 2016, it was with the explicit aim of putting a crowbar between you and live television. No longer would you aimlessly scroll through the company’s near-infinite EPG looking for something to watch. After it had time enough to understand the sort of thing you liked, it would be able to serve that up on the home screen whenever you turned your TV on. Now, while Sky Q can already interface and search through third-party apps like Netflix, there was still a church-and-state-like divide between Sky’s content and those from third-parties. With Sky Glass, that line has been dissolved, and the new software can index content from almost all of its partners.
Essentially, this is Sky’s way of masking the balkanization that takes place very frequently with the same show on multiple broadcasters and streaming platforms. Because I have small kids, the best examples I can think of are from children’s TV, but this applies to plenty of others as well. For instance, Sky’s own on-demand platform has a selection of episodes of Blue’s Clues and You available from the show’s three seasons. But since the first season is also available complete on Netflix, Sky Glass fills in the gaps with the Netflix-hosted episodes where it can. Similarly, Bluey is broadcast by the BBC in the UK but only offers a handful of episodes from the show’s first season on demand. Disney+ (which I do not yet subscribe to) has both seasons in their entirety, and I can see what I can and can’t access within a single menu.
At launch, Sky will index content from BBC iPlayer, ITV Hub, All 4, Netflix, Disney+ and Amazon Prime Video. Shortly after the hardware was announced, Sky’s parent company Comcast announced that it had signed a deal to bring Apple’s TV app to its platforms in the US and UK. As well as those content providers, Sky Glass can access YouTube, play music from Spotify, stream live exercise classes from Peloton and mobile games from the Play.Works stable. Unlike a smart TV or external streaming puck, however, you cannot add in additional apps unless Sky chooses to enable them. (Although, to be fair, it’s not as if companies like Amazon and Roku can guarantee that either, given their prior skirmishes with YouTube.)
The UI itself is very much an evolution of the template Sky laid down in 2016, with the linear, live TV menu not the first thing you have access to. Instead, you open with the curated “Top Picks For You” section which pulls from all of the services that you have access to. Because this is a loaned TV with a press account, these recommendations were all fairly generic and tied to Sky’s big-name shows but I’m sure they would improve over time. The menu now takes up a lot more verticality than before, mirroring a trend you see more and more online, where every website you visit requires at least one scroll before you get to the items of interest.
Scroll down and you’ll get a run of lozenge-buttons that break out various categories of content — TV Shows, Movies, Sport, Kids and the like. (Aside, YouTube really did remove the need for linear music television didn’t it? I haven’t looked at a satellite TV music channel for years but the “Music” button reveals only a handful of remaining channels.) Then you’ll get the linear TV menu, or at least what’s on BBC One and Two — you’ll need to click in to get access to the full TV guide. This has been given a graphical spit-and-polish to take advantage of the screen but is mostly the same as before. There’s a greater emphasis on artwork and good visuals, but Sky has mercifully opted not to fix what wasn’t broken.
Beyond the main TV guide, you get your “Playlist,” which is what Sky has created to replace the idea of a recording. After that, you’ll get a Top 10 list of shows pulled from every Sky user across every one of Sky’s platforms, a banner showing off Sky’s own original and exclusive programming, and a list of Play.Works games. These games are little more than mobile crapware titles — complete with pre-roll ads — that you’ll try once, realize are a waste of your time, and never play again. If there’s one irritation, it’s that the main settings menu is buried at the very bottom of this page, and takes several long presses to reach if you’re in a hurry.
Remote
Daniel Cooper
I’d say most people have an intimate relationship with their remote controls, so often we use them throughout the day. The map of their buttons is laid indelibly onto our subconscious to the point where I think I could probably navigate mine blindfolded. Sky’s remotes are historically best in class for both ergonomics and thumbfeel, but the Glass remote (pictured, right) is a culture shock. Now, I’m averse to saying that just because something is different it is inherently bad, but the process to unlearn half a decades’ worth of training has been a challenge.
Part of this is because Sky has pulled several well-used buttons off the remote to simplify how it works. Some of those functions are now available in an on-screen menu triggered by the remote control equivalent of a hamburger button. Others, Sky would argue, have been replaced by the unit’s automatic curation and voice control features. But it means that things that were previously directly accessible in two seconds now take significantly longer. It is this drive for efficiency that, in some cases, makes things less efficient overall.
Since the days of the Sky+ remote, there has always been a Volume rocker on the left hip of the device and a Channel Up/Down rocker on the right. But, this time around, Sky has ditched the channel Up/Down rocker, and moved the volume rocker over to the opposite side. Similarly, the dedicated transport controls which used to circle the clickpad have also been snipped. Both of those jobs are now the exclusive domain of the clickpad — another chunk of unlearning you’ll need to do if you’re coming from another Sky product.
One consequence of these removals is that there’s now no easy way to Page Up/Down through the EPG like you could with the Channel Up/Down rocker. And you can’t push forward 24 hours using the Fast Forward button like you used to. Now, one of my weekly rituals is to look for which episodes of Columbo — a show I fell in love with during the pandemic — are being broadcast each Sunday. But whereas I could page down and across to find Sunday’s schedule in about 10 seconds with Sky Q, now you have to long press on the click pad. And it takes forever.
Now, my irritations with the button layout notwithstanding, the Glass remote is a very savvy upgrade. The hardware is now coated in a matte rubber that will hopefully not scratch as easily as the previous gloss models did. The overall layout is cleaner, I will admit, and the removal of the text buttons from the number pad — while annoying — makes everything look nicer. Not to mention that the buttons now light up when in use, which helps you in low-light situations and, you know, generally looks pretty cool.
Voice
Sky has been offering voice search for years, but now you can simply bark “Hello Sky” at your TV for it to turn on. Hell, the thing has a motion sensor, and will spring into life if it detects movement in front of it after a long period of stillness (except at night). It’s clear that Sky wants you to use Glass more like a piece of smart home gear than as an old-fashioned TV. And it works most of the time, although my feeling is that it takes two good tries before it understands exactly what you’re saying. When you speak (while there’s something already playing) it’ll often mute the speakers and ask you to go again in order to get a better shot of hearing what’s going on.
Honestly, the ability to just say “Hello Sky” as you walk into a room to turn the TV on (if it hasn’t yet detected your movement) is pretty cool. But we are not, not entirely, at the point where you can rely upon this search functionality as a complete replacement for old-fashioned text search. It doesn’t help that you have to revert back to the remote after your initial query to do anything you actually want to do. So, at this point, it straddles that awkward gulf between a novelty you use only to show off to your neighbours and an everyday essential.
Playlist
There has always been an awkward relationship between those who make and sell movies and TV shows, and those who consume it. The former wants absolute control over how material is distributed and the total profit maximization that ensues. End users, meanwhile, may feel that if they’ve already paid to watch something, they don’t want to be nickeled and dimed into paying again. But between DVDs, and now streaming, the balance of power has been handed in its entirety back to the producers. Sky Glass, if it was possible, goes a step further, stripping you of all of your rights to engage with broadcast material on your own terms.
Doomy thesis statements aside, Sky Glass does not have the ability to locally record broadcast content. In fact, it doesn’t even use the word “record” in the 17-page document sent to reviewers, because it’s no longer a thing. Instead, you have access to your own “Playlist” to which you can add content that you’d like to watch. For on-demand content that is already neatly packaged on a server, either in Sky’s HQ, or Netflix’s, Or Amazon’s, Or the BBC’s, that’s fine. It’s when it comes time to save something that isn’t easily made available on-demand that the real issues start to become apparent. Sky added that there isn’t a storage limit per-se, since all of it is stored on a server somewhere anyway.
Put simply, Sky has a series of digital recorders chopping up and saving programs from live TV as they are broadcast. But, for various obvious legal and contractual reasons, it can’t simply let you access those recordings willy-nilly no matter how much you pay Sky per month. Sadly, the only way you’re going to be able to access any of that material is if you had the foresight to add that particular broadcast to your Playlist ahead of time. But, alas, even if that is the case, you’re not actually going to get the right to watch and “keep” that recording in “perpetuity” like you can with Sky Q.
Match of the Day, as a good example, broadcasts edited highlights of the weekend’s Premier League games on Saturday and Sunday nights. On Sky Q, or any other recording system, I can record the show and watch it at my leisure a day, or a month after the first broadcast. Sky Glass, however, doesn’t let you record the show, but instead directs you to the version available to catch up through BBC iPlayer. Now, because of the Premier League’s close control of its rights, that instalment is pulled a week after first broadcast.
In fact, even things that are recorded via Sky’s cloud recording system are only available for you for twelve months before they are removed.
An even better example comes with reruns of Frasier, which air at 9am on weekday mornings. Even if I set the series to my playlist in good time, none of the episodes are available to watch after the fact because the on-demand rights are blocked. Because the recording is taking place in a server room at a Sky facility somewhere in the UK, it’s no longer under your control. And this is the problem with ceding any and all control back to the content providers, because it comes at the expense of any form of convenience. (Paramount+, meanwhile, is coming to the UK at some point in 2022, and will be available on Sky Glass.) I’d like to remind you at this point that if you max out your Sky subscription, you’ll pay more than a hundred pounds a month for this lack of service.
Reading the user forums on Sky’s website has been instructive here, and some of the earliest Sky Glass adopters aren’t thrilled at the fudge. Certainly, there’s nothing in the TV Guide to let you know that a playlisted show isn’t available to watch afterward. Hell, add Frasier to your own playlist and after broadcast it’ll just show a blank tile, click on that and you’ll be shown a list of episodes broadcasting live that week. And there’s no way ahead of time to know if this is the situation that will greet you when you get home from a long day at work.
One thing that I hope Sky Glass will do is force every broadcaster and streaming platform to audit their metadata. There is nothing worse than looking for a show on-demand, selecting it, and then learning that actually the content included does not match the description. After all, if we’re going to be searching for these things on-demand a lot more frequently, it’s not going to be good enough to simply dump your content online and hope the descriptions are right.
Economics
Sky Glass is available in five colors: Ocean Blue, Dusky Pink, Racing Green, Ceramic White and Anthracite Black. As a standalone purchase, Sky Glass costs £649, £849 and £1,049 for the 43-, 55- and 65-inch models, respectively. But Sky is betting that users would much prefer to fold in that cost to their monthly TV subscription, paying a token figure up-front and spreading the cost over 24, or 48 months interest-free. Users then need to work out which package they want to add to it, with the cheapest being the Sky Ultimate TV bundle (which includes a basic Netflix sub) for £26 a month. It’s £5 extra per month for HDR and Dolby Atmos content, £25 for Sky Sports, £11 for Sky Cinema, and £5 for Sky Kids. (Users can also pay for BT Sport, for an additional £30 per month, with all of these Sky TV packages running on a 31-day rolling contract.) In addition, it appears that after the first year, users will also need to pony up an additional £5 per-month to be able to skip ads from inside the ITV Hub, STV Player and All4 apps.
Here’s an easier breakdown of the prices and what you can expect to shell out, both for your TV and for the content to fuel it.
Sky
The one problem is that it’s tricky to quantify what sort of rival TVs we should compare this to, if any. After all, most regular TVs require dedicated soundbars and a set-top-box so it would be unfair to run this side-by-side with a standard set of panels at these dimensions. But I can set myself a budget there, or thereabouts, and see what sort of goodies I can turn up.
Panel-wise, Hisense’s A7-series is a good place to start, since you can get a 43-, 55- and 65-inch panel depending on your need. Each one is a Quantum Dot 4K set including HDR 10+, Dolby Vision, a 60Hz refresh rate and voice control through Google Assistant or Alexa. Depending on the panel size you go for, this will set you back £399, £499 or £699, which gives you headroom enough to find a half-decent soundbar. Sadly, the cheapest Dolby Atmos-equipped soundbar I could find was JBL’s Bar 5.0, which sets you back £249. Thankfully, Sky Q’s cheap, so there is a chance you could avoid being locked into this new content dystopia for some time yet.
Now, if you so choose to buy Sky Glass and then not continue with your Sky subscription (once Glass is paid for, or bought outright), then it’ll still work. The company says that the three HDMI ports and built-in soundbar will all work fine, and the app will still enable you to access third-party apps. The only friction you’ll apparently notice is that you’ll need to re-sign in to all of the apps that you’re using on the system. You can also watch Digital Terrestrial TV by plugging in the requisite aerial and setting it up as required.
Should you buy it?
The one downside of making any sort of pronouncement about a Sky product is that Sky Glass’ proliferation is almost inevitable. After all, history shows that Sky is happy to gently reduce the price of its hardware products to help get its services into more homes. I have no doubt that while, for now, Sky Glass is a pricey option, in a year or two it’ll be discounted enough that it’s impossible to ignore.
And I wouldn’t blame you if you wanted one purely because it offers a level of simplicity and elegance that you simply don’t get with most regular TVs. Banishing the bulk of the sprawl and ensuring that your TV corner stops looking like a server room is something to aspire toward. Certainly, Sky Glass — on paper — is a fantastic idea, and the execution is pretty good in almost every regard.
It’s just that buying Sky Glass ensures you are forever yoked to the devil’s bargain of being reminded, constantly, that you have no control. The sharp elbows of the content licensing giants means that things you wanted to record at your convenience can now not be relied upon. If a media giant in California doesn’t think you deserve to watch a daytime TV show when you get in from work, then you don’t get that opportunity.
There’s a very reasonable solution to this problem, of course, which is that Sky should throw in a HDD into this hardware. I don’t believe for a moment that there isn’t the space, and there should be no technical limitations as to why you can’t with this system on chip. For the majority of shows, you can watch them on-demand without any fuss, and for everything else, you can have a local recording free from the clutches of content licensing restrictions.
If you’ve rolled your eyes at the back half of this review, and honestly see no need to worry and fuss about access to recordings, then Sky Glass is for you. But if you’re even a little bit concerned about the lack of freedom that such a system brings, I’d say hold fire for now.
US President Joe Biden has signed into law the Secure Equipment Act that blocks companies like Huawei and ZTE from receiving network licenses. The new rules mean the FCC (Federal Communications Commission) can no longer consider any applications for network equipment that may pose a national security threat, Reuters has reported.
With the measure, the FCC can no longer issue or review licenses to companies on the FCC's "Covered Equipment or Services List." It was passed by a 420-4 House vote and approved unanimously by the US Senate last month. "We have already determined that this gear poses an unacceptable risk to our national security, so closing what I have called the ‘Huawei loophole’ is an appropriate action for us to take," said FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr.
We have already determined that this gear poses an unacceptable risk to our national security, so closing what I have called the ‘Huawei loophole’ is an appropriate action for us to take.
The FCC formally designated ZTE and Huawei as national security threats last year, finding that the companies had close ties to Chinese Communist Party. However, they were still able to apply for licenses as long as no federal funds were involved. To that end, Carr has been pushing legislators to pass the Secure Equipment Act.
"Once we have determined that Huawei or other gear poses an unacceptable national security risk, it makes no sense to allow that exact same equipment to be purchased and inserted into our communications networks as long as federal dollars are not involved. The presence of these insecure devices in our networks is the threat, not the source of funding used to purchase them," Carr said back in March.
Earlier this year, the FCC launched a $1.9 billion "rip and replace" program to help US telecoms replace Huawei and ZTE equipment they may be using. House member Steve Scalise last last week that "Huawei and ZTE "are probably the two most prominent companies that still have a lot of equipment out there where Americans’ data runs across those networks."
Huawei has yet to comment on the legislation, but last summer called the FCC's proposed revision "misguided and unnecessarily punitive." Joe Biden is expected to speak with Chinese leader Xi Jinping in in a "virtual summit" tentatively set for next Monday.
