Garry's Reviews Autumn 2018 - Fascinating Tech Magazine

Garry's Reviews Autumn 2018

Garry Reviews

 First he covers the slightly bigger brother to the 3D printer he reviewed last month.

The DaVinci Mini

The Mini is a very open 3D printer. Very easy to reach in from the front which is not a bad thing unless you have pets or perhaps young people with inquisitive hands. XYZ Printing have obviously realised this and supply a shield. This shield was the first thing we saw opening the box and its flimsy clear plastic gave a very false impression of the quality of this printer.

The Mini is in fact an extremely well made printer. It is far more practical than the Nano we reviewed last with a much bigger printing footprint. Other than that though and the welcome addition of wireless connectivity much of what we said about the Nano applies although we didn't suffer any bad prints this time.

It still features the Da Vinci trade off between price and the  proprietary printing media which some people don't like. You have to do the maths about the amount of printing you do but we feel it is a good balance for the average hobby user. Obviously Da Vinci are subsidising the cost of the printer by locking you into their own PLA reels.

 Printing is reasonably fast - about 25% slower than a printer we tested that costs a thousand pound more. As usual with DaVinci accuracy is good. Alignment seemed very good out of the box.

XYZ Printing remain one of our favourite 3D printer manaufacturers and we really like the Mini - at the price you are not going to find much better.

Edifier R1850DB

These lovely looking active bookshelf speakers from Edifier took me back to my youth. Reminding me of some the small but  high end speakers from the likes of Kef and Mission. 

One of the key things with these sort of active speakers is that one is usually a master with all the amplification and the other passive. These have to be connected by a cable and often these can be a bit restrictive for placement. Fortunately Edifier give enough cable for virtually any bookshelf placement.

What is also great is the connectivity with one  optical and 2 aux ins. These latter are RCA type but in our box there was a 3.5mm to RCA cable allowing PC connectivity.

Sound quality for such a reasonably priced (sub £160) speaker set is phenonemal. I've mentioned Edifier magic in previous reviews and these live up to that. 

Bluetooth 4.0 connectivity is brilliant allowing for multiple paired sources and sounds really good.

The supplied remote is simple but effective.

We like these speakers. If you want to upgrade your PC or Laptop speakers for gaming or music playback or just need some bookshelf bluetooth speakers then definitely test these. 

Finally here are our IFA highlights...

We'll also have some IFA products in our Gift Guide issue later this year

This video feature our favourite highlights from IFA including the fabulous Segway E-Skates. These are in effect individual hoverboards for each foot with independent control. As the BBC correspondant found out as he found himself on the floor this is not easy but once you get it these are highly entertaining. Segway themselves though are targetting these as fun items rather than the next thing in last mile transport.

The Acer Thronos is an amazing construction which reminds me of the Big RAT from Joe 90 for those old enough to make the connection (the videos are on youtube) It is a gaming rig with 3 great screens that articulate down from above to enclose you in a fabulously comfortable chair. Great fun and I want one for my editing suite.

Finally the Segway Lomos is an interesting mix of Robot and last mile transport. Basically a robot you can ride which onece you get off can follow you and make videos or carry your bags.

Editorial Did we make it to Berlin? How was IFA? It has been a quarter of shows Garry has opinions on Cenex LCV as well.		Smart Cities Our cover story how smart is your cit. Garry visitied Connexin Live to find out		Ruth's Reviews Better Bluetooth calls on the move - Ruth looks at jabra and Libratone's latest
		Garry's Reviews Last issue's DaVinci Nano bigger brother the DaVinci Mini reviewed. Great bookshelf speakers from Edifier and a few quick looks at tech from IFA.		Back to the cover