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Tuning in to ReSound’s LiNX Quattro (Part 1)

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This is the third hearing aid review Tested Technology has undertaken in the past couple of years. Readers may be wondering why we’re paying so much attention to this niche market. Fair enough. Let’s deal with that question. It’s not the niche business you might think. In 2017 the global market for hearing devices was estimated to be worth a little under $6.5 billion and is expected to reach over $9 billion in the next… Now read on…

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Posturite’s Opløft Sit-Stand Desk

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The (probably) life-saving VariDesk sit-stand desk I reviewed last year, now a permanent fixture in my office as an antidote to that other fixture, my leather-upholstered Juniper Wall-Hugger recliner, has certainly bucked up my thinking about the ergonomics of office work. Google latched onto my renewed interest, and has been inundating me with “relevant” ads. For £1,000 mesh office chairs, for £200 articulated monitor arms to position my screen just-so and, of course, for other… Now read on…

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New Amazon Fire TV Stick with Alexa Voice Remote

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We reviewed the first Amazon Fire TV Stick back in 2015 and praised it for being a cheap “disposable” add-on that could turn a regular TV into a Smart TV. The problem with so-called “Smart TVs”, we argued, is that while the screen technology should be good for at least five years, the electronic smarts get outdated very quickly. Fine if manufacturers keep their TV firmware regularly updated. But they don’t. So buy a TV… Now read on…

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The P30 Pro: Huawei’s Last Hurrah?

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I began my review of Huawei’s previous offering, the Mate 20 Pro by calling it “the most complete smartphone that has ever crossed my desk.” So when I set off, in March of this year, to Paris with a contingent of some fifty UK journalists for the launch of the Chinese company’s new P30 series of smartphones I was preparing myself for mild disappointment. Why? The previous year, Gang He, president of the company’s mobile… Now read on…

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NVMe versus SATA: The Future of SSD

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WD NVMe Black, 1TB

The serial AT attachment interface, or SATA (pronounced “sarta”) has been with us for nearly twenty years as a means of connecting storage devices like hard drives and optical discs to our computers. At the turn of the century, it replaced the earlier parallel ATA interface, a clunky arrangement using thick ribbon cables that took up a good deal of space inside our devices. SATA has stood us in good stead, but it’s worth reminding… Now read on…

Evotion and the Oticon Opn™

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I didn’t intend to switch hearing aid brands. It happened like this: My GP initially directed me to the NHS audiological department at North Finchley Memorial Hospital, which, as I subsequently discovered, actually outsources to Specsavers. After a month or so with Specsavers, I asked to be transferred to Guy’s Hospital at London Bridge. The Guy’s Dental Unit has been looking after my teeth for over a decade now, and I’ve been very impressed with… Now read on…

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Best of Breed: The Huawei Mate 20 Pro

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Tested Technology laps up technology. But the first part of our name is even more important. While we’re always keen to keep readers up to date with what’s going on in IT, we’re not in the business of leaping into print with a cut-and-paste from the latest whizzo spec sheet. Or a faithful echo of the manufacturer’s brochure. We’re not a news sheet. We test stuff. We live with it. And when we’re done—however long… Now read on…

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Synology Nursery Slopes: the DS119j Pt 2

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In the first part of this review, we covered the DS119j hardware, how to install the operating system and some of the niceties of its power consumption. But at this point, you probably want to know what you can actually do with the thing. The short answer is: quite a lot. But—and this is crucial— not all at once. DSM? MY EXPERIMENTS WITH THE DS119j raised some doubt about what the three letters of the… Now read on…

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Synology Nursery Slopes: the DS119j Pt 1

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We’re all having to run local area networks (LANs) these days. Back in the last century, our IT life tended to be based around our PC. Or maybe a pair of PCs, with the odd items of data initially being swapped between them via floppy disks. Techies call this Sneakernet. As the century wore to a close, we started joining our devices together. At first, using wire—Ethernet cable. But by the time laptops became ubiquitous,… Now read on…

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Philips Somneo: Your Electric Dawn

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Philips Somneo

Very few of us these days are getting enough sleep. But it’s easy enough to get used to waking up tired and grinding on into your busy day. And so we go on doing it, day after day, night after night. It doesn’t need to be like this. In the previous century that was the message from the pharma companies. But we’ve begun to realise that—except in clinically serious cases of insomnia—drugs are probably not… Now read on…