Facebook is expanding its support of physical security keys for two-factor authentication (2FA) on mobile devices, the company said in a blog post Thursday. The social platform has supported security keys for its desktop version since 2017, but starting today, it will let users on its iOS and Android apps use them to secure their accounts as well.
Two-factor authentication provides another layer of support for online accounts, requiring users to log in with their password and an additional piece of information, usually a numeric code generated by a third-party system. Without both pieces of information, it’s much harder for someone to access your account even if they have your password.
“We strongly recommend that everyone considers using physical security keys to increase the security of their accounts, no matter what device they use,” Facebook’s blog post states.
GIF: Facebook
Physical security keys, which connect to your device using USB or Bluetooth are widely considered the best way to protect online accounts. Other methods, like authenticator apps or SMS alerts, generate codes for users to type in, but the codes could potentially be intercepted by a malicious third party seeking access. Once a user connects the key — which they need to keep on their person or nearby — to their device, it verifies their identity, allowing them to log in.
Twitter said earlier this week it is planning a future update that will allow accounts with 2FA enabled to use security keys as their sole authentication method. Right now, Twitter users can use a security key plus a second 2FA method as backup.
(Pocket-lint) – After four years, the Apple iPad mini 4 was succeeded by the iPad mini 5 in March 2019.
The current iPad mini is a 7.9-inch tablet that offers the same design as its predecessors, but a major upgrade in terms of its capability.
This is how the iPad mini 4 and the iPad mini 5 compare. What’s the same, what’s different and should you upgrade?
iPad mini 4 vs iPad mini 5: Price
The iPad mini 4 cost £319 when it was still available. It is now discontinued, though you might find it through second-hand vendors and some resellers.
The iPad mini 5 starts at $399 in the US or £399 in the UK for the 64GB model or £549 in the UK and $549 in the US for the 256GB model so it’s quite a bit more expensive than the iPad mini 4.
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What’s the same between the iPad mini 4 and the iPad mini 5?
They might be several years apart, but there are a couple of similarities between the iPad mini 4 and its successor, the iPad mini 5.
Design
Touch ID
203.2 x 134.8 x 6.1mm
Silver, Space Grey, Gold
The iPad mini 4 and the iPad mini 5 share the same design, as well as the same measurements. Both offer an aluminium body with curved edges and rounded corners and both come in Silver, Space Grey and Gold colour options.
On the front, the display features bezels at the top and the bottom and Apple’s Touch ID fingerprint sensor is positioned at the bottom. Unlike the iPad Pro models, the iPad mini 5 does not get Face ID.
Display size and resolution
7.9-inches
2048 x 1536 resolution
Both the iPad mini 4 and the iPad mini 5 have a 7.9-inch display with a 2048 x 1536 pixel resolution for a pixel density of 326ppi. The two devices also both opt for a Retina LED backlit IPS LCD screen.
Rear camera
8MP, f/2.4
1080p video
Both the iPad mini 4 and the iPad mini 5 have an 8-megapixel rear camera with a f/2.4 aperture. They both have HDR for photos and they both offer 1080p video, but the iPad mini 5 does offer some improvements.
Speakers
Stereo speakers
Both the iPad mini 5 and the iPad mini 4 offer stereo speakers, which are situated at the bottom on the device next to the Lightning port.
Battery
10 hours
The iPad mini 4 and the iPad mini 5 have the same battery capabilities, promising up to 10 hours of surfing the web on Wi-Fi, watching video or listening to music. The iPad mini 5 performs better in the real world though, thanks to the upgraded processor over the mini 4.
Software
iOS 12
Both the iPad mini 4 and the iPad mini 5 are capable of running the latest iOS build – iPadOS 14. The iPad mini 5 offers a couple of extra features though, and it is a smoother, faster experience too.
What’s different between the iPad mini 4 and the iPad mini 5?
They might look the same on the surface, but there are several differences beneath the hoods of the iPad mini 4 and iPad mini 5.
Processor
iPad mini 5: A12 Bionic chip
iPad mini 4: A8 chip
As you would expect, the iPad mini 5 updates the processing power of the iPad mini. It has the A12 Bionic chip under its hood, while the iPad mini 4 has the A8 processor so there are some big improvements in speed between the two mini models.
Storage capacities
iPad mini 5: 64GB/256GB
iPad mini 4: 16GB/32GB/64GB/128GB
The iPad mini 4 was originally available in 16GB, 32GB, 64GB and 128GB storage options. The iPad mini 5 launched in two models with a 64GB option and a 256GB option. None of the iPad mini models offer microSD support.
Front camera
iPad mini 5: 7MP, 1080p video
iPad mini 4: 1.2MP, 720 video
The iPad mini 5 has a 7-megapixel front FaceTime HD camera with an f/2.2 aperture. It is capable of recording 1080p video and it offers a Retina Flash and wide colour capture.
The iPad mini 4 meanwhile, has a 1.2-megapixel FaceTime HD camera, offering 720p video.
Display technology
iPad mini 5: Apple Pencil, True Tone
iPad mini 4: No Apple Pencil, no True Tone
The iPad mini 5 and mini 4 might share the same display size and resolution but the iPad mini 5 offers Apple Pencil support, which the iPad mini 4 does not.
You’ll also find Apple’s True Tone technology on the iPad mini 5, along with a p3 wide colour gamut, neither of which the iPad mini 4 offers.
Conclusion
The Apple iPad mini 5 and mini 4 might look the same, but the iPad mini 5 offers several hardware upgrades.
For those with an iPad mini 4, you’ll likely notice quite a big difference in performance if you upgrade to the mini 5, along with a more capable front camera, Apple Pencil support and the option of more storage.
It’s an expensive upgrade though and all the differences are under the hood rather than on the surface, so some may find it hard to justify.
For those looking to choose between the iPad mini 4 and the iPad mini 5, the 5 is the one to go for if you have the budget. You might find the iPad mini 4 still around in some places, but remember the tech underneath is now several years old and it’s possible there will be a new iPad mini in the not too distant future.
(Pocket-lint) – Arlo has been refining and expanding its offering over the past few years, with the Arlo Pro cameras moving to their third version and evolving into the Pro 3 Floodlight Camera, a hybrid of two areas that Arlo operates in – cameras and lighting.
While most Arlo cameras now offer some sort of LED illumination, the Floodlight goes a lot further, crossing over into space that was previously dominated by dedicated security lights. So is this fusion a best of both worlds?
Design and installation
Dimensions: 218.5 x 77.9 x 190.5mm / Weight: 650g
Wire-free installation
Waterproof
The Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight Camera essentially looks like an Arlo Pro 3 camera sitting in the middle of an LED bar. The design maintains a familiar look to the body of the camera, the big difference being that spread of lights to the front. But this camera is longer in the body than the regular Pro 3 too and has a more substantial wall-mount to accommodate the additional weight.
As before, there are two main components to the light: the wall mount and the casing; and the camera, light and battery assembly. The latter combination slides into the casing and clicks into place.
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That means there are no seams or joints on the body, the only place where there’s a joint is around the end of the casing where it meets the back of the light – and well sealed to keep water out. It’s survived some heavy rain and having used Arlo cameras over a number of years, we’ve found them to be waterproof, so no concerns here.
There’s also no way to lock the camera into the housing, you just have to press a button to release it. That’s not a problem for cameras mounted high, but if it’s within reach, it could potentially be removed easily – and not necessarily by yourself.
Installation is simple, because there’s no need for a wired connection, it’s a battery-operated device. That means you can position the light wherever you please, but you will have to drill into the wall to secure the mounting plate. All the screws and wall plugs are supplied in the box, and it’s a quick job to get it up there.
Once the mounting plate is in place, you can attach the remainder of the casing, secured with another screw so it can’t be easily removed. Then the camera assembly slides into the housing and locks into place. The angle can be adjusted, with a ring around the base of the mount to tighten it all up and keep the camera pointing in the right direction.
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Arlo has an healthy range of accessories and if you’d rather have this as a wired device, you can buy a charger that magnetically fixes to the bottom, while there’s also a solar charger option too.
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Setup and the Arlo system
2.4GHz Wi-Fi or SmartHub or Base Station connection
Arlo app control
The Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight will either act as a standalone camera – connected to your Wi-Fi network – or it can connect to an Arlo SmartHub or older Arlo Base Station. In some previous devices the SmartHub was obligatory, but the Pro 3 Floodlight gives you a little more freedom, meaning it’s a more affordable route to getting a single Arlo device up and running.
Using the SmartHub means you get 2K local streaming and 2K local recording on a microSD card, as well as auto zoom and tracking features, so it delivers a wider array of features than the standalone route.
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Setup is all managed by the Arlo app on your smartphone and that’s the place to start. Given the size of the camera, it’s worth charging and connecting before you put it in place on your wall, just to make sure everything is working correctly – something that’s easier to do when you don’t have to worry about climbing up and down a ladder repeatedly.
The Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight will happily work within an existing Arlo system, the main advantage here being much more substantial illumination.
Once connected and installed, you’ll have to decide how your camera behaves. Unlike some systems, Arlo doesn’t just start recording everything automatically, you have to decide what you want the camera to do. This is important because they are battery operated and capturing every movement will soon drain the battery.
As this is both a light and a camera, you also have to decide if you want to separate these functions. You can choose, for example, to have the light come on when movement or sound is detected, or you can have video captured, or both. Depending on how and where you install the camera, you do at least get the chance to choose and via the app you can create operation modes to cover all your needs.
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Talking about battery life, Arlo says that the battery will last 6 months, although we suspect that’s in an environment where it’s not triggered. We suspect the typical battery life would be around 3 months, but it’s going to depend on things like the temperature and how much you capture – dependent on the volume of usage. We’re on track for about 2 months of usage, but we have the device illuminating on motion detection and capturing the cats coming and going on the garden whenever it’s triggered.
Recharging takes 5-6 hours for this extended battery pack and you have to remove the entire camera array to plug it in via Micro-USB to get it recharging. For those who don’t want to worry about battery life, we’d recommend the solar panel to keep it running instead.
Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight Camera performance
2K HDR video capture (2560 x 1440 resolution)
2-3000 lumen floodlight
160-degree wide angle
Built-in siren
2-way audio
The camera on the Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight is basically the same as the Arlo Pro 3. That gives you a great wide-angle lens covering 160-degrees, with the option to reduce that angle of capture if you want something narrower.
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There’s a 2560 x 1440 pixel resolution, although you can opt for lower resolution if you want. To view those 2K videos you’ll need a device that supports HEVC (iOS 9 or later, Android 5 or later), but that covers most smartphones from beyond the past few years. The advantage that a higher resolution offers is that you can zoom in to see a little more detail on captured video if you need.
It’s a good resolution, able to capture plenty of detail and thanks to that huge floodlight on the front, when triggered in low light, you’ll get high quality video at night too. It’s better than the non-Floodlight version because there’s a lot more light available for night-time capture, although for some it might be too bright and be irritating to neighbours – but you can also change the brightness.
You can capture night video without the floodlight, with IR illumination able to provide some coverage, although not to the same extent as the full floodlight experience and that’s rather more basic – but still useful.
With all that light available, the Pro 3 Floodlight also works great as a welcome home light, even if you only have video capture when you’re away from home. Via the app you can also manually turn on the light, which is useful if you want to do something outside when it’s dark.
Motion detection can be defined in zones (if you’re an Arlo Smart subscriber), which means you can choose not to have it triggered by passing cars, only motion on the driveway, for example. You can also set the sensitivity for motion or audio triggers. As we said above, these triggers can be ascribed to both the camera, the light or both together.
Able to capture audio, you can also talk through the Arlo’s built-in speaker, meaning you can converse with someone you catch doing something you’re not happy with – while there’s also a siren that you can manually trigger, or have automatically trigger, which you probably don’t want outdoors, but could be useful if you’re using it to monitor your garage or storage shed.
As with other recent Arlo devices, you’ll need an Arlo Smart subscription to get the most from the Pro 3 Floodlight Camera – priced at $2.99/£2.99 a month. That unlocks smart features like like the detection zones, auto pan and zoom, and 2K video cloud storage for 30 days.
It’s all about the Arlo app
Voice assistant compatibility
Remote monitoring
Customisation
While the Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight Camera can act as a standalone device, it works best as part of a system. That’s because you’ll need to use the Arlo app to control it – and it’s better to have one app, rather than a collection of apps to control a range of cameras from different manufacturers.
Unlike something like a lightbulb, the range of options that Arlo presents means there’s a lot more to get to grips with, but there’s some integration with other systems, like Apple Homekit, Alexa, Google Assistant, IFTTT and SmartThings. You can, for example, view your Arlo cameras through a device such as the Amazon Echo Show, but we still maintain it’s better to use the Arlo app directly, as you can then view your history and have full control of your devices.
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You can also have voice-controlled activation of your Smart Hub. This will allow you to arm your Arlo system via voice through a virtual assistant like Amazon Alexa – with the option to have PIN protection for voice disarming too.
The Arlo app, on the whole, is good. It takes some time to learn your way around it and explore the wealth of features, but it’s generally stable. There will be the occasional time when you open the app to have it reported that you have no connection and can’t see any cameras, but generally restarting the app (and checking you actually have a connection of course) resolves that.
Alerts can be customised and with an Arlo Smart subscription, you can choose the type of alert you want too – such as vehicle, animal or person. You then receive a rich notification on your smartphone, getting a thumbnail of the person detected, for example.
Verdict
Arlo is one of the most popular home camera brands and it’s easy to see why, thanks to the versatility that the system offers. The Arlo Pro 3 Floodlight Camera offers all the advantages of the Arlo camera system, but with that powerful lighting giving you more options – and the flexibility to choose how it is used.
It’s a bit of a big beast, but given that you could remove your regular floodlight once you have the Arlo in place probably offsets that worry.
Overall the great performance, good quality video night and day, along with a wire-free setup and the option for hub-free operation means it’s great on its own or as part of a wider system of cameras.
Alternatives to consider
Pocket-lint
Ring Floodlight Cam
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Less pretty than the Arlo, this camera offers greater flexibility with directional spotlights. It’s around the same sort of price, but uses the Ring system instead, with a 1080p camera, although it is a wired camera.
Read the Ring Floodlight Cam review
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Netatmo Smart Outdoor Camera
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The Netatmo camera is wired – designed to replace an existing outside light – so it’s not quite as simple as the Arlo, but it does come with no ongoing costs. That’s because it saves the footage to internal storage which you can then access via the smartphone app. It’s a 1080p camera.
Nvidia on Thursday announced a new subscription tier for its GeForce Now cloud gaming service called Priority that will replace its existing paid Founders tier and contain the same perks like extended session length and RTX support. The catch: the change will come with a price increase, from what used to be a $4.99-per-month subscription to what will now be a $9.99-per-month one for new subscribers. Nvidia will also start offering a $99.99-per-year Priority subscription.
However, those who had active memberships as of yesterday, March 17th, will be eligible for the Founders pricing for life, Nvidia says, which comes out to a little less than $60 per year. The company still plans to offer a free tier of GeForce Now, too, but that tier restricts you to a one-hour session length. Nvidia says the price hike is meant to represent the platform’s evolution since it launched in beta way back in 2015 and entered what Nvidia has referred to as a public testing phase a year ago.
“As GeForce Now enters year two, and rapidly approaches 10 million members, the service is ready to kick things up a notch,” the company said in a statement. “GeForce Now launched out of beta last February with Founders memberships — a limited time, promotional plan. On Thursday, Founders memberships will close to new registrations and Priority memberships, the new premium offering, will be introduced.”
Image: Nvidia
Those who have tried out GeForce Now with a Founders subscription but let that subscription lapse may be displeased to find out that Nvidia does not intend to give the $4.99-per-month pricing to anyone who may have been a paying subscriber in the recent past, even if you let your subscription lapse a few days ago. You’ll need to have been an active, paying Founders member as of yesterday, and you’ll also need to keep the membership active to continue paying the reduced price. If you cancel, you’ll lose the promotion for good.
“Members need to be subscribed to the Founders membership as of 3/17/2021, and keep their membership in good standing, to be eligible for the benefit. If you were previously a Founders member but downgraded, unfortunately you’re not eligible,” an Nvidia spokesperson clarified to The Verge.
To its credit, Nvidia hasn’t sold monthly memberships for some time now, instead selling a promotional six-month bundle for $24.99. That makes it less likely that someone who subscribed any time in the last few months will find themselves ineligible for this Founders pricing perk.
Nvidia intends to continue upping its investment in the platform as it’s proved quite successful, with close to 10 million members, in the otherwise struggling cloud gaming scene. Most recently, Google closed down its in-house game development studios creating titles for its Stadia service, while Amazon’s Luna platform remains in beta.
GeForce Now differs from those platforms by letting members stream games they’ve already purchased from Epic, Steam, and other digital distributors over the cloud. The service’s paid tier launch last year was a bumpy one after high-profile publishers like Activision Blizzard and 2K Games pulled their libraries, the dispute caused by Nvidia streaming those companies’ games without explicit permission.
Since then, Nvidia has switched to an opt-in model to court game makers to the platform on friendlier terms, a strategy that’s paid off as Nvidia has added roughly 10 new games to the platform every week. The company now has a full list of supported titles on its website, a welcome addition after the rocky licensing fallout of last spring.
Nvidia says the tech will keep improving over time, while its “GFN Thursday” new game onboarding will jump from 10 new titles added per week to 15 by the end of the year. GeForce Now will later this month get support for Adaptive Vsync, which “synchronizes frame rates at 60 or 59.94 Hz server-side to match the display client-side, reducing stutter and latency on supported games,” the company explains. Nvidia says it’s also releasing a “new adaptive de-jitter technology” to increase bit rates for games streamed over slower networks. (Nvidia could not, however, provide a timeline for when the platform will support 4K streaming when asked.)
Other benefits coming soon include account linking for games with cross-platform support and improvements to preloading to cut down load times by half, both coming in the next one to two months. Nvidia says it’s also adding data center capacity in Phoenix, Arizona, as well as bringing online its first Canadian data center in Montreal later this year, both of which will help reduce wait times.
As for the company’s iOS beta, which launched back in November, Nvidia didn’t have much new to share. But a company spokesperson did say that “all previously announced projects continue to be on the roadmap in collaboration with the team at Epic,” referencing the ongoing work to bring Epic’s Fortnite back to the iPhone and iPad via GeForce Now on the mobile web after it was banned by Apple and Google last summer.
Microsoft’s Presenter Coach, which helps you practice presentations, has been available on the web version of PowerPoint for a while now, but it’s finally coming to the desktop and mobile versions of the app. According to Microsoft, the feature will now be available on Mac, Windows, iOS, Android, and, of course, the web.
PowerPoint Presenter Coach listens to you while you practice a presentation out loud — it analyzes what you’re saying, and can warn you if you’re talking too fast or slow, using filler words like “um” or “ahh,” or just reading the words off the slide (a personal pet peeve of mine). Trying it out on both PowerPoint for Windows and iOS, it worked shockingly well, doing pretty much everything Microsoft says it should. At the end it gives you a little report, telling you what you need to practice.
Along with the expanded availability, there are also some new ways that the feature can try to make your presentation better: it can look at body language (how close you are to the camera, if you’re making eye contact or putting things in front of your face), and warn you if you’re repeating words or saying them wrong. And yes, it still tells you not to swear in your presentation.
PowerPoint for web (seen here) censors the profanity, but the version for Windows hilariously doesn’t.
When I tried it, the feature didn’t show up in the Mac version of the app, but I was able to use it on iOS. Microsoft was not immediately available for comment about when the feature would show up on the Mac, or on whether the vocal and video analysis was done on-device or in the cloud for the desktop and mobile versions.
For the privacy-conscious, though, it is worth noting that when I tried it in airplane mode, it told me I had to connect to the internet to use the coaching feature.
TikTok will soon make personalized ads mandatory, meaning you’ll start getting ads in the app based on the kind of content you engage with, whether you want them or not.
TikTok’s notice about ad changes.Image: TikTok
The app currently has a setting that allows users to choose whether they’ll be served ads based on their activity within the app. “Starting April 15,” reads a notice shown when opening the app, “your settings will change and the ads you’ll see may start to be based on what you do on TikTok.”
People will still be able to control whether TikTok personalizes ads based on data pulled from other apps and websites. The change in TikTok’s privacy settings reflects the way ads already operate on many social media sites, including Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram. Users can opt out of advertising that’s personalized based on tracking across different sites, but not the personalization based on activity within the sites themselves.
The change is likely related to Apple’s upcoming rollout of iOS 14, which will require developers to get users’ permission to track their data across apps for targeted advertising. Any apps that don’t request permission will risk suspension or removal from the App Store. Making personalized ads mandatory allows TikTok to target advertising to some extent as more people opt out of cross-app tracking.
Starting April 1st, users setting up a new iPhone in Russia will see a screen that allows them to automatically install apps that are officially sanctioned by the Russian government, in compliance with Russian law (via Engadget).
The law in question was passed back in 2019, and requires smartphones, tablets, laptops, desktops, and smart TVs sold in Russia to come pre-installed with specific apps made by Russian companies by April 1st, according to Russian news site Vedomosti. (The law was originally set to go into effect in July 2020, but was pushed back to April 2021). Vedomosti also says that apps won’t be installed if users don’t want them. Apple confirmed to The Verge that it will comply with the law by giving the users the option to install the apps when activating the phone.
Which apps are specifically going to be offered to users remains unclear, though Vedomosti cites a government services app, and apps from Russian companies including Yandex, Mail.ru, and Kaspersky Lab. The government seems to be aware that it might be problematic to favor specific apps, and is planning to expand its list over time: “The Ministry is not at all interested in seeing popular apps included in the mandatory pre-installation list take dominant positions. If alternatives emerge on the market, prove interesting to users and gain popularity quickly, they will be included in this selection and also offered for pre-installation,” a Russian official told Vedomosti.
Apple has historically kept tight control over the iPhone’s setup process, and that appears to now be changing, if only in one market. While Apple has previously made changes to stay on the side of local laws — it’s changed maps, blocked pride watch faces in Russia, and now stores iCloud data on state-run servers in China — this may be one of the more dramatic changes, as it affects a screen that every user will see when they set up their iPhone.
Apple has slowly been allowing users to change how iOS works out of the box, with the ability to change some default apps in iOS 14, but now it’s given a small amount of control over the setup process to the Russian government, too. As the company faces legal challenges from the EU and US over antitrust, and over giving its competitors a level playing field, we may see Apple having to give over some more control to governments if it wants to sell its phones to their citizens — though it probably won’t be compelled to ask users if they want to install Spotify at setup. Probably.
GoPro is releasing a new version of its main smartphone app that will now be called “Quik.” The new app will remain the main interface for connecting to and controlling GoPro cameras, but it is also getting new features, including one called “mural” that’s sort of like a private Instagram feed meant to help people organize their favorite images and videos — regardless of whether they were taken by a GoPro camera — and save them from the “abyss of your camera roll,” GoPro CEO Nick Woodman says in an interview.
Close followers of GoPro’s efforts in the software space know that the company already once launched an app called Quik way back in 2016 that was all about auto-editing footage to a beat. But that app has not been supported for a while and will no longer be available to download after today with the launch of the new Quik app.
The auto-editing feature will live on in the new app, which launches on iOS and Android today. It also has a few other features like a video editing suite (including a speed adjustment tool), themes and filters, and unlimited original quality cloud backup of everything posted to the mural feed. GoPro is charging $1.99 per month or $9.99 per year for those features, though the basic camera connection and control side the app will remain free to use for people who don’t want to pay for the new stuff. Customers who already pay for GoPro’s Plus subscription service (which includes unlimited cloud storage, live-streaming functionality, and camera replacement) will get Quik’s features for free.
Woodman sees the new Quik app as something of a culmination of a yearslong effort at GoPro to diversify away from hardware that started around 2013 and 2014. And by gearing the app at a wider audience, not just GoPro users, he thinks there’s great opportunity to be had.
In fact, that wasthe strategy with the original Quik app, which let users mash together photos and videos from their camera roll without requiring the use of a GoPro. And it worked: Woodman says that app still had “roughly eight million monthly active users” despite having been essentially abandoned by the company.
While he doesn’t expect all of those users to pony up for the paid version of the new app, he thinks many will appreciate the mural feature because he still doesn’t see any good solutions to that camera roll clutter problem — especially not albums. “Albums suck. Albums are just miniature camera rolls,” he says. “You don’t go into albums [thinking] ‘This is going to be a super awesome experience. Hey honey, let’s AirPlay our album to the TV and kick back and reminisce.’ You don’t do that.”
Users can build out the mural feed in the Quik app a few different ways. One is fairly straightforward: after you open the Quik app and give it access to your camera roll, you can scroll through and add photos to the mural feed or to “events” (not albums, of course) on the feed. The more attractive option, in Woodman’s eyes, is to add photos and videos you take on the fly using the share sheet every time you capture a “keeper.” (Users can also text or email photos to the mural feed.)
That said, Woodman thinks people may use the feed in all sorts of ways, like saving images that inspire them or for planning a project, a la Pinterest. Others will just use it for their GoPro footage and photos and nothing else.
“It can be all of those things,” he says. “I think that what we’re solving for people is like a very relatable and widespread problem: I don’t have a convenient, private place to put content that matters most to me, and you know what, sharing it to your Instagram feed ain’t working because there’s that tension of, ‘Well, this matters to me, but I know it’s not going to really matter to anybody that I would socialize it with.’”
GoPro has carved out a decent supplemental business so far with its Plus subscription service, with nearly 800,000 paying subscribers as of the end of 2020 (the equivalent of just shy of roughly $40 million of annual revenue). But with Quik, Woodman sees not just a great business opportunity or a chance to reach new customers. He sees it serving a higher purpose.
“Not to bash on social feeds, like there’s a lot of good from them, we get a lot of inspiration from what other people are doing. But damn it, man, you can get a lot of inspiration from just looking at what you’ve been doing with your life. It’s pretty awesome,” he says. “This is the cosmic moment where I point to the deeper meaning behind what it is that we’re doing for people with Quik, because I think we’re really going to help people develop a stronger sense of self-esteem, self-worth, and ultimately happiness. You don’t have to find happiness in what other people are doing. There’s a ton of happiness to be found in what you’re doing with your life and and Quik helps you bring that to the forefront.”
Philosophical value aside, bringing more customers under the GoPro tent has long been a goal for Woodman; it’s a big part of what inspired the company to make a more concerted push into software. But whether or not GoPro turns the new Quik app into a moneymaker, that it’s attempting another shift in its software strategy is on its own a sign that the company is back on solid ground. It spent the last few years pruning its camera lineup back to the essentials, quickly scuttling a dalliance with the drone market, and focusing more on selling directly to consumers. That has the company back in the black and willing to take chances again.
“We’re known for enabling amazing content. It’s just until now, it’s always required a GoPro,” Woodman says. “[But it’s] too limiting to just serve people through our hardware alone. Let’s also serve people through software. Meet them where they are. And we can build a phenomenal business.”
Dropbox is adding a new feature on top of its usual offerings of storage and file sharing for free Basic accounts. Dropbox Passwords, the password management feature the company introduced for paying customers in 2020, will be free for Dropbox Basic accounts in April — with a new, arbitrary limit of 50 passwords that makes it seem suspiciously like a way to upsell you on a paid Dropbox account.
Now that LastPass is putting a device limit on its free plans, many are looking for a free alternative, and Dropbox Passwords will indeed allow you to sync your passwords across three devices for free. Like other password managers, it exists as a web browser extension, a mobile app on iOS and Android, and desktop applications on MacOS, Windows, and Linux. But other free password managers, like Bitwarden, offer unlimited passwords for free.
The 50-password limit might only make sense if you don’t have a lot of online accounts (grandparents come to mind). I think it would be very hard to find someone who both uses Dropbox and doesn’t have a stack of passwords numbering in the hundreds, and it’s not like it costs Dropbox more money to store double, triple or quadruple the number of passwords. We’re talking about text, not multi-gigabyte videos. If you’re already using a free Dropbox account for other files, you’re probably storing things that are already far larger than all the passwords you’ll ever use in your lifetime.
Still, it might be a worthy introduction to better password security for existing Dropbox users, and if you’re already paying Dropbox $11.99 per month for a Plus account or $19.99 per month for a Professional account, though, here’s a good reminder that Dropbox Passwords exists and you can easily give it a try. Dropbox plans to allow users to securely share passwords to other accounts at some point in the future, too.
When asked about the choice of 50 passwords, Dropbox said “We’re confident that 50 passwords will suit most users on our Dropbox Basic plan. For those who need more, we have a number of other plan options to suit various needs and individual, family or professional situations.”
Dropbox Passwords is available on free Basic accounts in April, but you should read The Verge’s list for some equally free, more fully-featured alternatives.
(Pocket-lint) – The Garmin Lily is pitched as a smartwatch for women. Garmin says it’s the smartwatch we’ve been waiting for: “classic enough to make a statement and modern enough to keep you connected”.
With a patterned lens over a greyscale touchscreen and a super small and compact design, is the Garmin Lily really the smartwatch women would want – or is the non-targeted wider market a far better place to pick from?
Compact design
Dimensions: 34.5 x 34.5 x 10.15mm / Weight: 24g
Classic and Sport models
Six colour options
14mm bands
The Garmin Lily is small – very small in fact – which is probably why Garmin has specifically pitched this device at women. It would get completely lost on a larger wrist. With a 34mm casing, it’s 6mm smaller than the 40mm Apple Watch, but its strap is much slimmer too, making for a very feminine device overall.
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Some will love its simplicity and elegance, while others will find it just too little. Compare the Lily to the likes of the Garmin Vivomove or Vivoactive ranges and you’re looking at a device that’s a fraction of the size.
In terms of finish though, the Lily is stylish and the design is versatile – it looks good with sportswear as well as dressier outfits. We aren’t quite sold on the patterned lens, though, which sits over the touchscreen – which, by the way, only appears when you flick your wrist – but the polished bezel, lugs and detail on the buckle are all nice touches.
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Flip the Lily over and you’ll find the heart rate monitor (HRM) on the underside of the lightweight casing, along with the charging pins. We had the Sport model so our review unit has a silicone strap, which is soft and comfortable to wear. There’s also a Classic model, with a more classic strap.
Interesting display
16-level greyscale TFT LCD display
1 x 0.84-inch, 240 x 201 pixels
Patterned lens coating
The Garmin Lily has a 1-inch touchscreen display that sits behind a patterned lens. It’s a clever design, though as we mentioned previously, we aren’t huge fans of the actual pattern that Garmin has chosen.
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The touchscreen is greyscale so there are no rich and vibrant colours like you would get on the Apple Watch or Fitbit Versa, making it a little less exciting than other smartwatches available. The touchscreen is nice and bright, however, so we had no issues seeing it in brighter conditions.
The screen is responsive too, when it’s actually on and you are navigating through the various options. The flick-of-the-wrist action or pushing the touch button at the bottom of the screen to get it on is less responsive though.
There were multiple occasions where we had to flick our wrist several times to wake the display up. The touch-sensitive button works fine, but you have to hit it in exactly the right spot – and the size of the device can make this fiddly.
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There’s also no always-on display option within the settings. This feature would of course drain the battery – which isn’t great anyway, more on that later – but it means the patterned lens is very prominent when the touchscreen isn’t on, which is most of the time. Many of the clock faces available are simple and perfect for having on all the time so we’d have liked this as an option.
The Garmin Lily is packed with features – some of which are excellent – but it misses out on a couple of important ones. Let’s start with what it does have though.
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There’s heart rate monitoring, respiration rate tracking, blood oxygen monitoring (VO2 max), stress tracking, advanced sleep tracking, and Garmin’s Body Battery monitoring, along with menstrual cycle tracking and hydration tracking – the latter two of which are manual (and, just to make note, available on many other Garmin products too).
You’ll also find the standard activity tracking features you’d expect, such as step counting, elevation, reminders to move, calories burned, distance, and intensity minutes.
Other features include 5ATM water resistance (which is down to 50m depth) and basic swim tracking, smartphone notifications, weather notifications, the ability to control your smartphone music, text response and call reject functionality (for Android users) and running cadence.
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Sounds like a lot, we know. And it is. But you’ll get those on other Garmin products, by and large. And the Lily misses out built-in GPS – which seems like a major omission for Garmin – and especially at this price point. It’s a bit baffling really.
The Lily does offer Connected GPS, but that of course requires you to take your phone with you when you run or walk. It also doesn’t offer Garmin Pay and there aren’t as many specific workout options available compared to the likes of Apple Watch.
Performance and battery
The Garmin Lily’s battery life is claimed to last for up to five days, but we struggled to get three out of it. On a couple of occasions we got less than two. Turning off blood oxygen monitoring helped to extend the life – as this cuts into the battery life significantly – but it definitely wasn’t a five-day device in our experience.
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In terms of other features though, the Lily performs well. Though we would really like to see more activities to select, like Hiit, the Lily was on par with the Apple Watch Series 6 for the way it measured any runs or high intensity workouts we did.
The heart rate monitor responds quickly during Hiit – something we didn’t find happened with the Fitbit Sense – and our runs were almost identical in terms of statistics to the Apple Watch.
Sleep tracking is also great on the Lily – if you want to go to bed wearing a watch – and we love the idea of Garmin’s Body Battery feature, although we wish it didn’t always tell us we were basically running on fumes.
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Smartphone notifications, however, are disappointing. Garmin calls the Lily a smartwatch, but it isn’t really – or at least not compared to the likes of the Apple Watch.
Best smartwatch 2021: Top smartwatches available to buy today
By Britta O’Boyle
·
For those on Android, you can reply to texts and reject calls on the Lily. But for iOS users, you can only clear notifications, making it a little pointless and pretty much just a battery drain.
Garmin Connect app
Android and iOS compatible
The Garmin Connect app offers a number of extra features on top of those found on the Lily itself. It’s also where you’ll find all the collected data, allowing you to delve a little deeper.
The Connect app is easy to use once you know how – much like the Lily itself. It’s not as clear as the Fitbit app, but there’s heaps of data to go through if you want. There is also no paywall on Garmin for some features, like Fitbit has done with its Fitbit Premium subscription.
At the bottom of the Connect app, you’ll find five tabs: My Day, Challenges, Calendar, News Feed and More. The first is likely the one you’ll use most, giving you a summary of your activity, including heart rate, Body Battery, stress, steps, calories. Tapping on each category will give you further breakdowns.
To see a summary of all the activities you have specifically tracked using the Lily, you can tap on your profile at the top of the Garmin Connect app. You can also see a summary of your statistics here too, like personal records.
To change settings – such as selecting which activity options appear on the watch – tap on the circle at the top of the Connect app with the Lily in it. From here, there are alert settings, general settings, appearance and activity tracking settings to go through, among others.
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On the Lily itself, tapping on the touch-sensitive button at the bottom of the display will take you to the main menu, which includes Watch Face, Activities, Settings and Clocks.
Swiping down from the top of the main screen will take you to a quick setting menu with options like Do Not Disturb and Notifications. Tapping on the Notifications icon is the only way to see past notifications that have come through on Lily from your smartphone.
Swiping right to left or left to right on the main screen of Lily will take you to My Day, with further swipes detailing health stats, calendar appointments, weather, menstrual tracking, hydration, Body Battery, and intensity minutes.
Verdict
The Garmin Lily is a small, lightweight, elegant device that is comfortable to wear, and has an interesting design. That’s the summary of its good features.
But there’s just too much lacking – the most prominent of which is no built-in GPS. Even without this feature available the battery life is poor compared to what’s promised, smartphone notifications are pretty pointless – in that you can’t do anything with them – and we aren’t especially keen on the patterned lens design either.
If you’re after a watch that offers good activity tracking in a very small and dainty package – and don’t mind taking your phone with you when exercising – then the Lily has its share of positives. But Garmin’s own range offers more features at similar prices, so we’d look there – accepting the result will be a physically larger product – to get more of the features that matter.
Also consider
Garmin
Garmin Vivoactive 4s
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The Garmin Vivoactive 4s has all the features the Lily offers, but it offers built-in GPS, more sports apps, Garmin Coach, Music and Garmin Pay. It comes in a 40mm option so while it is bigger than the Lily, it offers a lot more in that extra size.
Best Garmin watch compared
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Apple Watch SE
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The Apple Watch SE isn’t too much more expensive than the Garmin Lily – especially not if you’re looking at the Classic model – but it offers a lot more in the smartwatch department for Apple iOS users, and it has plenty of great fitness tracking features too.
Amazon is updating its Prime Video app to include a new feature: the ability to play episodes of a show on shuffle (via Android Central). This feature could make it easier for people who just want to watch a sitcom without having to actually pick an episode. Clicking the button should just start playing episodes in a random order.
The feature seems to initially be somewhat limited though — according to Android Police, it doesn’t let you shuffle through the entire show, only one particular season. At the moment, it’s only been spotted on Android.
Amazon may be trying to race Netflix to rolling out a shuffle function: according to Variety, Netflix has announced that it will be rolling out a a shuffle button to users sometime in the first half of 2021. Finally, I’ll be able to be even more confused trying to watch JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.
It’s unclear whether (or if) this feature will be coming to the iOS or web versions of the app — Amazon did not immediately reply to a request for comment.
Pocket, an app for saving articles to read later, is rolling out a sorting option to Android users over the next few weeks that could solve my paralysis when choosing something to read. The new sort by time-to-read feature, spotted by The Verge’s Dan Seifert, means articles can be organized where they fit best, whether it’s the five minutes it takes to microwave lunch, or a 20-minute wait for the late bus.
The feature appears in both the search section of the app, and as a sorting feature in your main list. A reader can sort their saved article search by length, choosing from Quick (less than five minutes), Medium (six to ten minutes), Long (eleven to twelve minutes), and Very Long (over twenty-one minutes). Your list of saved articles can also be organized by newest saved, oldest saved, longest to read, and shortest read, according to Pocket’s VP and General Manager Matt Koidin. If the feature proves popular, after Pocket “modernizes its iOS codebase,” Koidin says the company will bring these sorting options to iOS and the web as well.
In my pre-pandemic life, when I used to ride the bus to work almost every day, I’d constantly misjudge what I was getting myself into when deciding what to read. Pocket’s pre-existing time-to-read stamps for articles help, but when you have a dragon’s hoard of writing you wanted to read at some point, things get complicated. Finding an article that can fit into a typical commute time might help people actually finish reading what they care about.
I assumed reading time was personalized, but Koidin says that Pocket actually bases its estimates on an average 220 words-per-minute reading speed. Now the hair on the back of my neck goes up when I think about great writing as a reading length first, rather than a holistic work of creative effort, but I think it’s easy to see how useful this could be (if I wasn’t shackled to an iPhone currently).
Commutes might not be in the equation for everyone just yet, but for those who still travel to work regularly, the feature might help. It at least has me missing my reading time on the bus.
(Pocket-lint) – Oppo is on the move, gaining popularity in its home market where it’s even overtaken Huawei. But it’s not just gaining at home: it’s now undoubtedly a top contender in the world of smartphones, make it the most likely challenger to Apple and Samsung’s dominance.
Oppo’s latest effort, the Find X3 Pro, is seeking to go toe-to-toe with the likes of the Galaxy S21 Ultra and iPhone 12 Pro Max, offering a big and premium flagship experience that, as we’ve found, is stunning in almost every way.
Distinctive design
Glass and metal design; curved glass around rear camera enclosure
Dimensions: 163.6 x 74.0 x 8.26mm / Weight: 193g
IP68 water and dust resistance
For the past few years we’ve seen smartphone makers all use the same tired design and – for 2021 so far – thankfully we’re seeing some new takes. Samsung kicked things off with its odd, but purposeful, camera hump in the S21 series – the one that wrapped around the edge of the phone to form a more deliberate part of the design.
Now the Find X3 Pro delivers what we think is an even more refined finish. Rather than have a separate unit for the camera, Oppo made the camera protrusion part of the same piece of glass as the rest of the phone’s back, forming this completely seamless curve. The company says it took 2000 attempts to get this right, and nearly gave up on the idea, but the effect is really unique.
The result is a lot more subtle and refined than just having a rectangle sticking out of the back fo the phone. It’s also unique, unlike anything else currently on the market. It’s really lovely to look at – and far better looking than the odd digital renders that leaked ahead of the phone’s launch – although the camera arrangement definitely has some iPhone-like vibes.
The rest of the Find X3 Pro’s back is one smooth surface with gradual curves towards the edges, while this blue model features a lovely frosted soft glass finish that’s really nice to the touch. The branding is minimal too, giving this phone a look and feel that’s highly polished and befitting of its high price tag.
It’s slimmer than its predecessor, the Oppo Find X2 Pro, too. In fact, it’s a more than a 1mm thinner than the vegan leather model of old and noticeably lighter too – although there’s no denying the Find X3 Pro is still quite a large phone. It doesn’t have the bulk or weight of the Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra though.
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It’s skinny bezels all the way around on the front and nothing cuts into that display panel except for a small selfie camera punched into the top corner.
Aligning itself slightly with recent trends, the curves around the edges of the display are less extreme than we’ve seen in the past, but are very much still there. It seems the trend of ‘waterfall displays’ died before it began. Unsurprising, really, given how easy it is to perform accidental touches on those things.
Another positive is that Oppo has built in some stereo speakers, so if the phone is close enough to your face, you get that left and right channel effect while watching movies and listening to music. The loudspeaker at the bottom is definitely the louder of the two, however, and can be quite easy to cover with a hand by accident – especially during landscape gaming – leaving you with quite a quiet left channel only.
Brilliant display
6.7-inch AMOLED panel, QHD+ resolution (3216 x 1440 pixels)
120Hz refresh rate (with adaptive frame rate)
1300 nits peak brightness
ColorOS 11 (based on Android 11)
Oppo has made something of a name for itself by putting fantastic screens on its phones this past couple of years. For 2021, that’s no different. With a high-resolution and fast refresh rate panel – with adaptive refresh up to 120Hz – the Find X3 Pro delivers on that sharp and smooth experience.
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As if that wasn’t enough, it can display up to a billion colours, is HDR10+ compatible, and has a peak brightness of 1300 nits. The display spec sheet is enough to make any tech nerd’s mouth water.
But it’s not just read it and imagine stuff, it’s great in reality too. It’s bright, it’s sharp, it’s dynamic, and the colours are rich. It’s set to FHD+ resolution by default, but it’s easy enough to change to QHD within the settings and get the full effect of its sharpness (inevitably minus some battery life).
We don’t find that it over-eggs the contrast too much either, so while blacks are really deep and dark, they don’t cause the screen to feature that overly contrasty or ‘black crush’ look we sometimes found with the Find X2 Pro or OnePlus 8.
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Oppo’s ColorOS software is great in a lot of ways too. As Android skins go, it’s worked itself into the position of being one of the cleanest, most fluid and attractive options out there. It doesn’t go crazy with colourful icons and trasitions like Samsung’s One UI, and has attractive rounded corners on the notification bubbles.
It’s come a very long way since it was effectively just a clone of Apple’s iOS back in the day – before Oppo’s launch in Europe (well, relaunch). There are some quirks though. Mainly around notifications.
There doesn’t seem to be a lot of consistency in how notifications are handled. For instance, we could have a little icon showing we have a notification on the always-on display, but then there’s nothing displaying on the Lock Screen. Or there coule be a little red dot on the app icon, but nothing showing up in the status bar or notification shade when we dropped it down.
The lock screen’s inconsistency was particularly unusual. Even when we’d set notifications to wake up the phone we’d see the notification light up the lock screen, but upon picking up the phone to check again, the notification would vanish – despite being unread and still showing as an icon on the always-on display.
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All of these quirks were despite having set notifications to have the ability to show everywhere (status bar/app icon/lock screen), and despite setting our most-used apps to ignore any battery optimisations that might push them to background status or send them to sleep.
Still, there’s some other fun and good points to ColorOS, such as the Relax app to help you get to sleep at night by playing some calming ambient noise. And we like the customisation options available for the interface and the always-on display.
Performance & battery life
Snapdragon 888 processor, 12GB RAM
256GB storage, no microSD expansion
4,500mAh battery capacity
65W Super VOOC 2.0 flash charging
30W Air VOOC wireless charging
5G connectivity
As far as pure power goes, the Find X3 Pro is up there with the best of them, featuring the top-end for 2021 Qualcomm Snapdragon 800 series. Here that means the Snapdragon 888 with 12GB RAM and 256GB storage.
Load up your favourite games and the phone handles them without breaking a sweat, keeping up with fast animations and transitions. It doesn’t stutter or lag anywhere, so it really doesn’t matter what you try to do with it, it’ll handle it just fine. It didn’t even get particularly warm, even after a 30 minute gaming session.
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Battery management is similarly efficient. We struggled to drain the full battery in a single day, even at a weekend with three hours of gaming and then some camera testing we still finished the day with 30 per cent left over.
On quiter days with only a little dabbling with news sites, maybe an hour of gaming and some social media, we could easily finish the day with more than 50 per cent left at bed time. So we have no doubt this could easily be a two-day phone for light to moderate users.
Then when the battery does eventually empty, it has Oppo’s trademark flash charging technology in both wired and wireless forms. With the wired adapter, it can full refill in under 40 minutes. With the proprietary AirVOOC tech – which OnePlus also uses in its Wireless Warp Charge stand – you can fill it up pretty quickly with the wireless charger too.
Under the microscope
3-megapixel ‘Micro lens’
Where to start with the camera. Let’s go with the gimmick bit first. Because, actually, it’s rather fun.
In its quad camera system, the Find X3 Pro has a so-called ‘Micro lens’. This gives you the effect of zooming in up to 60x and has its own little LED light ring around it. That’s an essential addition because it’s for shooting really, really close-up shots, allowing you to see detail you just can’t with the naked eye.
Launch the microscope mode in the camera and a curtain goes from being just about able to see a weave pattern to being able to see the individual threads and weaves in the construction. It’s a similar effect with a weaved nylon watch strap or a clothbound book. Hold it to a screen and you’ll see the sub pixels in the panel. It’s pretty cool.
Yes, it’s a gimmick – and with a low 3-megapixel resolution – so it’s not particularly sharp, but it is fun and definitely adds a different edge to your photography.
It also takes some concentration and very steady hands. Holding the camera 1-3mm away from a subject is hard enough without the extreme magnification also making every tiny hand movement or shake exagerated.
It has a macro mode too, which thankfully isn’t handled by this low-resolution sensor. It instead uses the same sensor as the ultra-wide camera – which we’ll come to later.
What that means for photos – examples of which you can see in the gallery above – is that your images retain colour, detail and a natural blur that you generally don’t get with a seperate, low-resolution macro camera. It can get you great results, although its automatic activation can take a little while to get used to.
With the camera set to its default 1x mode it’ll automatically switch to macro mode as soon as you get close to a subject. Sounds great, except it switches to the ultra-wide lens – and because that’s in a physically different position you have to then adjust and re-frame.
Our only real criticism here is that sometimes with the macro mode the background blur causes edges to appear to have a outline glow, which is kind of odd.
As for the other cameras, it’s pretty much all good here. Pictures have detail and a lot of vibrancy and life, especially when shooting in daylight. One of the best things is that both the ultra-wide and primary camera use exactly the same 50-megapixel sensor.
That means – since they make use of the same image processing tech too – that the balance of colour, dynamic range and detail between the two is pretty much identical. It helps photos taken from those two camera appear consistent, which isn’t the case on a lot of other phones.
The phone cameras seem to handle harsh lighting conditions pretty well too, balancing out highlights and shadows nicely. It’s a really reliable system.
One thing we did notice – in both daylight and night modes – is that the camera produces quite a warm colour balance. We like the look, but it isn’t necessarily the neutral and clean finish some will like. Saying that, there is a ‘Pro’ mode which will let you adjust all manner of settings, including the white balance.
There’s also a telephoto zoom camera with 2x optical zoom, 5x hybrid zoom, and up to 20x digital zoom, giving you that extra range you might want to shoot subjects further away.
Images from this camera don’t have that same quality look of the two primary cameras, but they hold up well – up to about 5x anyway. Zoom beyond that and the detail falls off quite rapidly. At 20x the picture looks quite ropey, with details somewhat jagged and blurry.
With night mode activated the phone performs well in low-light conditions too. To our surprise we found that both the primary and ultra-wide cameras perform well in night mode, drawing in a lot of light. Although, with its wider aperture, the primary is noticeably better.
We took the Find X3 Pro out to compare with the iPhone 12 and Google Pixel 5 at night and found that its images were warmer than the other two. It doesn’t seem as heavy-handed with contrast and highlights like the iPhone, but isn’t quite as realistic looking as the Pixel in our view.
Night mode doesn’t just apply to photos either. Tapping an AI enhancing button boosts the video performance at night too. This does effect the optical stabilisation a little negatively, but results in some pretty colour and hyper-realistic scenery, but it’s impressive to see the difference in really low-light situations.
Best smartphones 2021 rated: The top mobile phones available to buy today
By Chris Hall
·
Verdict
When it comes to display, battery life and overall speed, the Oppo Find X3 Pro is undoubtedly one of the best flagships on the market right now – and will likely remain a strong choice throughout 2021.
While the camera does have a habit of warming up pictures’ colour balance and sometimes making them a bit oversaturated, the whole system is immensely versatile and gets great results, regardless of lighting conditions.
The only other negative relates to quirks with notifications from the ColorOS software. Otherwise it’s hard to find much fault with Oppo’s top-tier flagship.
While Oppo might not be a familiar name to everyone, the Find X3 Pro is so fantastic in nearly every way that it’ll put the brand name on the map. It simply stands out from the crowd for all the right reasons.
Also consider
Pocket-lint
Samsung Galaxy S21 Ultra
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Oppo is competiting with the big names, and Samsung’s latest ultra-premium device has a lot going for it. The screen is fab and it has a super camera system. Oh, and that Phantom Black colour is stunning too.
Read our review
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iPhone 12 Pro Max
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It’s Apple’s latest all-singing all-dancing flagship and offers many of the same hardware features. It’s a very polished experience all-round if you’re not up for Google’s Android OS.
Google has detailed the efficiency improvements it made with Chrome 89, the latest version of its browser released earlier this month. Depending on whether you’re using the browser on Windows, macOS, or Android, Google says the browser should use less resources, launch quicker, and feel more responsive to use. There’s no mention of any improvements specifically for users on iOS.
The exact benefits vary by OS. Across platforms, Google says Chrome is able to reclaim as much as 100MiB (or over 20 percent on some sites) by using foreground tab memory more efficiently, and on macOS it’s saving up to 8 percent of its memory usage based on how it handles background tabs (something which Chrome already does on other platforms). Google says these improvements on macOS have benefited the browser’s Energy Impact score by as much as 65 percent, “keeping your Mac cooler and those fans quiet.”
On Windows and Android, the browser is also using a more advanced memory allocator across more areas to further reduce memory usage, and increase browser responsiveness. On Windows, Google says it’s seeing “significant memory” savings of up to 22 percent in the “browser process,” 8 percent in the renderer, 3 percent in the GPU, and that overall browser responsiveness is improved by up to 9 percent.
There are also a host of improvements specific to Android, which google says result in 5 percent less memory usage, fewer crashes, 7.5 percent faster startup, 2 percent faster page loads, and a 13 percent faster startup. High-end Android devices running on Android 10 and newer with at least 8GB of RAM should also load pages 8.5 percent faster, and be 28 percent smoother to use.
Google has made similar promises about previous Chrome releases. For example it said Chrome 87, released at the end of last year, was “the largest gain in Chrome performance in years.” Under-the-hood performance improvements were said to improve everything from CPU usage, power efficiency, and startup times.
It might work for those who need a CD player and streaming in one box, but there are far better alternatives if you can compromise on features
For
Plenty of weight to sound
Good timing
CD player can be useful
Against
Dynamically uninteresting
Bass detail is poor
With vinyl sales having overtaken those of the CD for the first time in 35 years, and cassette tapes enjoying a similar resurgence to the black disc, it is almost novel to be testing an all-in-one system such as the Technics Ottava F SC-C70 MK2 in 2021.
We’re very much in favour of any physical media inclusion in a sector that is increasingly geared towards streaming, of course; it’s just a pleasant surprise when there’s a wireless speaker asking us to dig into our racks of CDs.
This is actually the second generation of Technics’s most premium Ottava wireless speaker, adding features such as Auto Space Tune along with a complete retune for its new drivers. We didn’t get our hands on the first one, but did spend some time with the four-star Ottava S SC-C30 – the baby of the group – so feel justified in having some high expectations.
That said, you shouldn’t really need any prior knowledge of the range to expect something for the money you’ll have to pay. A price tag of £799 ($999, AU$1649) certainly isn’t the weightiest among the wireless speakers we’ve tested, but it does place the SC-C70 MK2 in a premium bracket.
We’ve heard plenty of speakers that can comfortably account for prices doubling that of this Technics, even without bonuses such as the CD player. But to get an idea of how stiff competition is here, we only dished out one 2020 What Hi-Fi? Award to a wireless speaker costing more than £500, and that one is £50 cheaper than the SC-C70 MK2. Essentially, this is a lot of money to spend, and you’re well within your rights to expect something special in return.
Build
(Image credit: Technics)
There are certainly some aspects of the SC-C70 MK2’s construction that resonate with its price. Opening the packaging reveals a thick aluminium top panel – either grey or black, depending on which of the two finishes you’ve chosen – and the speaker’s weight as you lift it from the box is equally reassuring.
It looks pretty good, too. There’s an industrial stylishness to its straight lines and vent-like grille, which stands out just enough while hopefully not dating it too much into the future; a speaker such as this should have some staying power.
The OLED display is small, but functional, while that top plate also houses a few well-engineered push buttons alongside a row of touch controls for playback. You probably won’t be up this close often, though, thanks to the included remote and ability to work the SC-C70 MK2 via its app.
Around the back, there are inputs for aux-in, optical and USB, alongside connections for the included radio antenna, power and wired internet. These are all sandwiched between a pair of reflex ports that complement a quintet of drivers inside.
Most notably, the SC-C70 MK2’s downward-firing subwoofer, which you’ll feel if you stroke the speaker’s undercarriage. It’s a 12cm driver aiming to add some serious depth to the pair of forward-firing 8cm drivers taking care of the speaker’s midrange.
Technics F Ottava SC-C70 MK2 tech specs
(Image credit: Technics)
Power 30W + 30W (40W sub)
Inputs Aux-in, optical digital, USB-A
Headphone out Yes
Finishes x2
Dimensions (hwd) 14.3 x 45 x 28cm
Weight 8kg
In this second-generation SC-C70, these woofers are said to benefit from the reduced weight of their voice coil, enhanced airflow and increased rigidity of their diaphragm, and aren’t the only component to have undergone a major revamp.
The pair of 2cm dome tweeters are much changed, too, with a lighter silk diaphragm and optimised acoustic lens for improved dispersion. And each section has its own JENO Engine full digital amp unit, delivering 30W to the tweeters and midrange drivers and 40W to the sub.
There’s a lot packed in, and it becomes evident that it’s the SC-C70 MK2’s interior, along with the top plate, providing most of the weight. Unfortunately, the rest of the outside is rather plasticky to the touch. That might not be of great importance, given you’ll rarely touch the speaker’s sides, but it’s a feature that extends to the swiveling CD lid. Our initial hope that this might be glass is soon quashed, and a less than smooth finish on the edge only compounds the disappointment.
Features
(Image credit: Technics)
At least we can’t fault the feature list. Built-in Google Chromecast means the SC-C70 MK2 is primed for multi-room use, while Apple AirPlay 2 and Bluetooth also offer wireless playback options. That is, of course, along with the CD drive, DAB+ and FM radio, and analogue and digital inputs.
Less ordinary, though, is Technics’s Space Tune technology, and more importantly this speaker’s new automatic function. The MK1 offered pre-sets of Free, Near the Wall, and Near the Corner; all of those are present again for quick EQing, depending on where your speaker is placed, but the new Auto function can do that more precisely by using test tones and on-board mics for optimal sound.
You can even go further, using the Technics Audio Center app to adjust settings depending on your listening position. iOS devices can also be used to measure room noise and acoustic conditions as well as further calibrating sound characteristics.
Sound
(Image credit: Technics)
Some tuning could be vital, depending on your room, as there’s a lot of power coming from the SC-C70 MK2 that needs to be kept tame. Most notably in the low end, where that subwoofer proves a sound investment early on for those who like a lot of bass.
The key, of course, is finding a good balance; the Auto Space Tune does a good job of that, and the ability to further tweak is welcome. But you won’t be criticising this Technics speaker for not having enough in the way of bass weight.
Detail levels are generally okay as well, giving enough information to keep that full-bodied presentation from becoming soft – in the upper registers at least. Unfortunately, though, the other side of all that bass is that the mix is a bit of a blunt object and rather bereft of detail.
Despite that slightly corpulent low end, timing is still surprisingly good. It is an aspect with which a lot of really bassy-sounding products often struggle, appearing slow or muddled, but the SC-C70 MK2 is actually rather good at keeping time.
However, because that accurate timing is betrayed by a real dearth of dynamic expression, it fails to deliver any great sense of rhythm. This is our main gripe: there is such a lack of expression it quickly becomes a wearing listen.
(Image credit: Technics)
We sit there willing the SC-C70 MK2 to appear a little more interested in the music we’re sharing with it, but it has made up its mind. It’s even more of a shame when you consider all the power it flaunts delivering those bass frequencies; even if just a little more of that was directed at giving some punch, this would be a more entertaining listen.
And as we noted earlier, the SC-C70 MK2 has entered the market among some seriously talented rivals. If we were underwhelmed with its performance at first, the Technics only loses more ground when we compare it with the Award-winning Naim Mu-so Qb 2nd Generation.
There’s no CD player here, of course, but you should ask yourself whether you really need one; the Naim is leagues ahead in terms of detail, rhythmic sense and excitement. And you can always put the money saved towards a CD transport later on if necessary.
You’d even get a better all-round performance by going for a micro system such as the Denon D-M41DAB. Again there are compromises – the stereo speakers are separate, so it isn’t a on-box solution, and your only wireless streaming is via Bluetooth – but if CD is your main concern, then it’s a no-brainer in terms of sonic performance and value.
For anyone considering buying the Technics SC-C70 MK2, our advice would be to go back to the drawing board and think about what you’re willing to compromise. Our choice would always be features or space, rather than compromising on sound.
Verdict
Regardless of whether or not there is a true like-for-like alternative, the Technics Ottava F SC-C70 MK2 is just too expensive to sound this lifeless. A re-tune may be able to solve its issues – the feature set and building blocks of a good performance are here, but at the moment you’d need some fairly specific requirements to consider this a worthy buy.
SCORES
Sound 3
Features 5
Build 4
MORE:
Read our guide to the best all-in-one systems
Read our Naim Mu-so Qb 2nd Generation review
Read our Denon D-M41DAB review
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