Ah, the holiday season. New York City is cold this part of year, where there are days that the wind hurts your face, but I enjoy this part of the year the most. That being said, here are some cool gadgets I played with during the weeks leading up to Christmas, concluding a year that has been fraught with both progressive and unwelcomed events.
Personally, I think 2017 will be interesting, if not a positive growth period, or something like that. Lastly: the world is better when you have a GTX 1080 and great friends at your disposal. Just trust me on that one.
Razer Blade 14
I even shot a video for the Blade 14 over at TechCrunch. Dozens of people have asked me over the years: “why don’t you do video reviews on YouTube?”. To answer that, I’d have to say I never enjoyed the idea, and that’s why I never pursued it. But hey, I can still do it, regardless.
Back to the Blade 14: it’s a well-specced computer considering the size and play most modern games at medium to high settings. That’s a feat in its own right, and the Blade 14 does all of this while providing 6 hours of battery life with a GTX 1060 and a quad-core Core i7. That’s impressive to me, so I take it for what it’s worth — a whole lot.
Oh, did I mention there’s a healthy mix of USB-C and USB 3.0 ports?
The new 15″ Macbook Pro with Touchbar
These are controversial laptops, for tons of reasons: outdated internals, a completely blowout and transition to the USB-C port standard, and the fact that no SD card exists means that no matter how well you’ve transitioned, a creative will need an adapter.
But, if you’re like me and can get past that all that, they can become fun machines to use. The Touchbar is a nascent innovation (if you want to call it that) and will require some time for third-party developers to support and eventually find truly novel uses for.
I’m not hating on Apple at all here; the Surface Dial and in fact the entire Surface Studio are aesthetically pleasing, well-equipped devices but don’t have the level of support needed to be long-lasting or successful, either.
All that being said, the specification shortcomings of the new Macbook Pros is unforgivable. This isn’t like the phone business, where Apple’s tight integration can squeeze out more out of “lesser parts” than their Android counterparts.
The Macbook Pros are personal computers, and should be competing with the latest specs. Chalk up Apple’s decision to use last-generation processors as one of supply-and-demand (or trust in the parts available), but it’s still something that is hard to look past, especially for me. Otherwise, I love this laptop.
In the end, they’re good looking and fun to use. But too much emphasis thinness can hurt a laptop, as I found out with the HP Spectre earlier this year.
HP OMEN X (with GTX 1080)
The new crown jewel of HP’s revitalized gaming portfolio, the OMEN X is a micro-ATX computer with a huge, heavy case. Call it cubism, but you wouldn’t be wrong, because this is a cube computer case balancing on vertices. Besides the unique design, there’s a fun lighting setup, paired with insane specs considering the price range.
That NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 is pure insanity — you can do nearly anything with this GPU — followed by a 4GHz quad-core Core i7 processor, 16GB of RAM and 2TB of hard drive storage space, with support for the speedy SSD NVMe spec in any one of four total drive bays.
Ports: USB 3.0, Thunderbolt 3/USB-C, audio jacks, DVD drive, SD card slot , DisplayPort and HDMI aplenty, the OMEN X can soothe your soul of all the input standards being obliterated by the industry-wide obsession of transitioning to USB-C. Which I don’t necessarily disagree with, even though it borders suicidal for creatives and professionals, video makers to programmers alike.
Let’s quickly talk about gaming performance.
VR? Easy. Battelfield 1, max settings, QHD screen? Hardly a sweat. 4K footage? Casual. The GTX 1080 is the most powerful graphics processing unit created by NVIDIA for desktops and it shows. To make the deal sweeter, HP uses the Founder’s Edition, so you get the casing and design that NVIDIA intended.
In short: it’s a badass desktop.
Helly Hansen winter gear
Three things the the folks at Helly Hansen sent me to test (non-sponsored, as always of course): the new boots, the 007-esque Warm Flow thermal and a raincoat that I actually consider a winter coat. Consider this a quick run-through of what wearing each item was like.
For example, the new Brinken boot is a healthy mix of rugged and casual design, leather being the backbone in terms of material.
The Royan Insulated jacket is a profile-fitting take on rain and motorcycle jackets, with hood that can be stored away in the color, or brought out when there’s too much wind or drizzle. The insulation is packed in the interior via a quilted design. Despite the thinness of the sleeves, it’s a warm lightweight jacket. Paired with a sweater and this is all it took for me to stay warm at 40 degrees Fahrenheit (4.4 degrees Celsius), so I think it deserves credit.
But then again, why not go all-out and get something even warmer?
Daydream VR (with Google Pixel)
Critics are agreeing that Daydream VR is one of the best VR experiences currently available. If not, it’s the best one in the mobile space, surely. It may lack the fancier motion tracking capabilities of other headsets in the space, but the fact that it’s so smooth, pixel-rich (pun intended) and capacity to grow into something even better means that Google isn’t just beta testing on all of us anymore.
In fact like the Pixel and Pixel XL, they can put out products that are worth buying in their first-generations.
Priority Cycles’ Continuum bicycle
This bike is a little bit of a unique creature: there aren’t many bicycles in the United States that use a drive system similar to what we see here. It’s what Priority Cycles calls a “Nuvinci hub paired with the Gates Carbon Drive Belt & hydraulic disc brakes”.
Basically, it can shift “gears” by the rider adjusting tension of the bike chain, rather than working through a rear derailleur like most other bicycles. It makes for a riding experiencing that isn’t a world away from what I’ve seen in racing bikes that are twice as expensive, but it is unique.
Take a glance, and you’ll see what else you’d be paying for: a rust-proof aluminum frame, puncture-resistant Continental tires, Tektro hydraulic disc brakes and composite fenders (which you can leave off if you prefer). Only then does it become apparent that the Continuum isn’t just a new drive system affixed to a nice looking road bike.
Which is in fact, exactly what it is. But, it’s good at it, so I’ll let that slide.
Inboard M1 electric skateboard
Oh, yeah. The Inboard M1 is real. It was heavily touted through CES and a couple of tech outlets as being the closest and best Boosted Board competitor — the de facto best electric skateboard currently available. Also designed in California, the Inboard M1 gives the Boosted a run for its money by providing a carrying case and a lesser price point (by $100 to the best Boosted model).
There’s also the inclusion of LEDs on the front and back of the board, which makes it that much safer to ride at night in New York City — where else would I be riding it, after all?
But overall as a riding experience, it sucks for me to say that I haven’t found a board better than the Boosted Board 2. The lack of a bamboo deck on the Inboard M1 means that you feel all of those bumps and twists in the road, greatly reducing ride comfort and generally instilling more concern (fear?) of veering off-course.
The remote, being ergonomic and generally cool-looking doesn’t interact with the M1’s firmware and drive system to maintain a specific speed. Instead, you ramp up all the way to the top speed of a given riding mode, meaning that you’re playing a 20mph game of speeding up, slowing down, using the break and generally trying to always hold the clutch to make some last-second adjustment.
Inboard mentioned to me that custom profiles will be made available through app and firmware updates. Until then, I’m going to stick to what I feel is overall safer to ride; though the danger can be a little fun.
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