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Exploring the Optoma Projection Mapper App

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I can’t say it’s high on my list of life-essentials, but projection mapping is certainly a lot of fun. And done right, can be stunning. You may have seen it at exhibitions or concerts. Instead of projecting a coherent picture onto a flat surface, as you do when watching a movie or giving a slide show, the output is directed at a target of three-dimensional shapes, painting each shape individually. The shapes can be a collection… Now read on…

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Wileyfox Swift_2, 2+ and 2X Part 3

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When the Swift_2 range launched late last year, the improvement over the original Swifts was immediately evident from the slim metal casing and the fingerprint reader on the back. The central processor was now bumped up from quad-core to octa-core, making it over half as fast again according to our benchmark tests. Bumped up, too, was the price. These new Swifts started in the mid-£100s, pushing above £200 with the top of the range Swift_2X… Now read on…

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Wileyfox Swift_2, 2+ and 2X Part 1

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Wileyfox launched this second generation of Swift phones towards the end of last year. You may be wondering why it has taken Tested Technology five months to get round to reviewing them. We haven’t been sitting on our hands. The hands have definitely remained in the ON position. Regular readers will know that we don’t rush to be first with the news, and we take the “Tested” part of our name very seriously indeed. The… Now read on…

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Wileyfox Swift 2, 2+ and 2X Part 2

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Tested Technology complemented Wileyfox hugely on its initial choice of the Cyanogen operating system. And we don’t take that back, even now that Cyanogen Inc, the operating system provider, has gone to join the Norwegian Blues (the name might have been a clue—it means “Blue Maker”, and also happens to signify a class of poisons). When Wileyfox launched its first phones nearly two years ago, Cyanogen was an improvement on stock Android, and a clear… Now read on…

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QNAP TS-451 NAS Server Part 6

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Since part 1, this TS-451 epic has been classified as Storage and Multimedia. But our discussion of  the multimedia side of things has so far been restricted to feeding music, pictures and movies down the LAN into a variety of multimedia clients. Essentially that’s still Storage. But the TS-451 truly is a multimedia device. Even without a LAN, this box can sit in your living room wired HDMI-wise into your TV or (better still) projector… Now read on…

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Blink Security Camera System

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Home security camera system? Not for me. Yes, there’s been the odd break-in on our street, but who wants to add a whole new wiring system throughout the house, with ugly cameras ruining the decor, to say nothing of the cost. And don’t you have to pay some sort of annual subscription? Actually, no, you don’t. You can completely forget about the wires too. And those ugly security cameras have shrunk to discreet white boxes… Now read on…

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Philips 258B6QUEB USB C Monitor

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We tend to take them for granted, even though we spend a lot of our working day and (at least in my case) playing time in front of them. Monitors matter. It’s easy to think that now we’ve assigned the cathode ray tube to the dustbin of history, all those old stories of damage to health have been put to rest. Experts assure us there’s no convincing scientific evidence that today’s flat screens are intrinsically… Now read on…

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QNAP TS-451 NAS Server Part 5

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Almost an entire year has passed since part 4 of this review, which I concluded with “to be continued”. You deserve an explanation. The Yamaha RX-679 and the QNAP TS-451 were two bits of kit that turned out to be much more fascinating than I’d anticipated. I knew when I got started that each of these was going to be a serial story but I didn’t foresee that together they’d more or less take over… Now read on…

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Huawei Mate 9 Smartphone Part 2

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The smartphone market is slowing down. IDC reports that last year growth in worldwide shipments fell from 28pc to 10.4pc, and will remain on a downward path this year. The biggest dent in the market is at the high end. As Tested Technology predicted over a year ago, those bling phones are being overshadowed by the rise of commodity phones, utility items that deliver what users need—and no more—in a plain package at an affordable… Now read on…

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Huawei Mate 9 Smartphone Part 1

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Six years ago when I picked up the first Samsung Galaxy Note, I knew at once that this was the right form-factor for a phone. And it still fits in your shirt pocket. Since then I’ve dallied with smaller phones, because these still abound. But late last year, the Huawei Mate 9 arrived. And it was like coming home. Huawei Mate 9 THERE ARE TWO VERSIONS of the new Huawei Mate 9. The one I’m… Now read on…