Tag: reviews

KitchenAid Design Series Evergreen Review: Beautiful and Useful

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The ubiquitous KitchenAid stand mixer—domestic icon, home cook must-have, subject of tattoos and even master’s theses—has rarely been controversial. Content to sleep tucked away within cabinets waiting to make cookies or birthday cakes, this century-old staple has garnered little public criticism for anything other than its price. (The standard 5-quart tilt-head Artisan costs $350; stand mixers from other brands run around $100.)

That all changed with this year’s Design Series release: the Evergreen. Unveiled in September, this zhuzhed-up tilt-head Artisan model is an appealing matte army green with a brass attachment insert cover, 5-quart pure walnut bowl (sustainably certified by the European Union Timber Regulation), and three steel accessories: paddle, dough hook, and whip.

It also costs $700—twice the price of a “standard” Artisan. Still, it’s hard to argue when KitchenAid has succeeded in making what might be the most attractive stand mixer of all time. And perhaps its most popular—KitchenAid says it sold out of its first run within a week.

Photograph: Kat Merck

Regardless, the negative headlines popped up faster than a batch of buttermilk biscuits. The Atlantic christened the Evergreen “the $700 kitchen tool that’s meant to be seen, not used.” Food & Wine said the wood bowl had divided their staff, and The Washington Post said bakers find the walnut bowl “perplexing at best, a gesture at aesthetics that renders the product useless.”

The accompanying promotional video, featuring hikers and more than one instance of performative fern fondling, does little to dispel the opinion that this might be for people who don’t actually bake.

It was not immediately clear, though, whether many of the critics had actually used the mixer. As a longtime home cook and baker who has helped line-edit and recipe-test for several bread-related cookbooks, including a James Beard award winner, I know my way around a KitchenAid mixer (and have used an Artisan model multiple times a week for more than 15 years). I also use unlined wooden bannetons regularly for proofing bread, as well as wooden spoons and wooden cutting boards on a daily basis, so the idea of a wooden mixing bowl isn’t exactly farfetched to me.

For four weeks, I used the Evergreen as I would any other mixer, on a range of recipes—from meringues and cookies to bread and whipped cream—to see once and for all if the offending bowl is actually usable or if the Evergreen is, as other reviews have insinuated, simply a kitchen cosplay prop for the well-off.

Hey Good Lookin’

It didn’t take me long to find one problem: Unlike on the Artisan’s traditional stainless steel mixing bowl, the Evergreen’s wood bowl has no handle. However, in practice, this didn’t bother me as much as I thought it would, as I realized I’m really only ever using the handle to wrench the bowl off its base or to steady it when an especially difficult bread dough threatens to unseat it.

Second, the bowl’s increased maintenance needs cannot go unmentioned. The mixer comes with a card that says to wash and dry the bowl immediately after use—in other words, no soaking off cookie dough in the sink overnight—and to regularly season the bowl with food-safe mineral oil, wood polish, or walnut oil.

This raises another problem: Many baking recipes, like meringues and soufflés, require whipping egg whites to what’s called stiff peak stage, where a whisk dipped into the concoction and lifted leaves peaks that stand tall and do not flop over. This strength lends needed structure and body to baked goods, but stabilizing whipped egg whites is a notoriously finicky process, and any kind of fat, including oil, can prevent them from reaching this stage. (In fact, KitchenAid’s Evergreen FAQ explicitly says not to attempt “whipped egg creations” in the wood bowl.) Would the oiled walnut bowl really preclude Evergreen owners from making soufflés in their $700 mixer?

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October 27, 2024
Even Realities G1 Smart Glasses Review: Superb Display, But Slow Info

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I’ve been wearing the Even Realities G1 glasses for four months, and while many people have commented on my new frames, only two friends asked if my glasses were “smart.” For someone who wore Google Glass in public and lived to tell the tale, this technological anonymity is high praise indeed. They look like glasses you might actually want to wear, and they don’t draw unnecessary attention to your (OK, my) face.

But as Clark Kent accessed his superpowers after taking off his spectacles, inversely, this mild-mannered reporter benefits from real-time language translation, access to AI, turn-by-turn navigation, and a personal assistant, all by keeping his glasses on.

Most smart glasses, like the Ray-Ban Meta, rely on Bluetooth audio, but the G1 features a small but brilliantly effective heads-up display called the Holistic Adaptive Optical System, or HAOS. Look carefully at the lenses and you’ll see a faint rectangle in each eye. This is where a micro-LED optical engine projector displays crisp, green digital text (640 x 200 pixels). Glance up (choose the angle via the app) and a seemingly two-foot-wide text homepage appears to float around five feet in front of you. Considering all this, it’s astonishingly clever given how light and, well, normal the frames feel.

The digitally surfaced lens is actually two bonded lenses but manages to be no thicker or heavier than a standard design. Prescription lenses cost $129 extra and, aside from the occasional glimpse of the projector screen in bright sunshine, works as well as any glasses I’ve ever owned.

Nestled on the end of each arm you’ll find two rubbery nodules. These contain the battery, buttons, and antennae that exchange real-time data with your phone over Bluetooth. They’re marginally heavier than standard glasses, but because the weight is kept away from the nose, they feel good. The frames are made from solid magnesium and have a cool matte finish, with the temples coated in silicon for added grip. Add in screwless hinges and a classic oval shape, and you’ve got a stylish proposition even before you charge them up.

Photograph: Christopher Haslam

The charging case is equally well designed and holds enough power to recharge the glasses 2.5 times. The 60-mAh battery in the glasses has enough power for 1.5 days.

So, they’re nice glasses—but what do they actually do?

Virtual Assistance

The idea of the G1 is not to replace your smartphone but rather to offer a pared-back interface that gives you help and information when you need it, then vanishes when you don’t.

After installing the app and syncing the glasses, when you glance up you will see a screen with the date, time, battery level, and upcoming diary dates (assuming you’ve given permissions). You can also receive messages and alerts from social and messaging apps. You can’t respond to any messages, though, which seems both odd and a shame given the onboard microphones and the transcription software used.

The right side of the main display is for QuickNotes. If you pinch the small box on the right arm, a note will flash up saying “Quick Note Recording.” When you speak, your words will be saved and displayed on the screen when you next look up. If you mention a date, time, or place, the AI assistant will add it to your diary. It’s great if you are a fan of voice notes. I’m not, but as someone who meets new people all the time but remains terrible at remembering names, I loved being able to have names, and even job titles, on display, for my eyes only.

Translation

Open up the Translate box on the Even Realities app, choose from one of 13 languages (including Mandarin, Japanese, and Korean), decide what language you’d like things translated into (in this case English), and press Engage. If someone then speaks to you in that language, the G1 glasses will listen, translate, and write the words on your HUD.

Annoyingly, however, it’s no Babelfish. With one-on-one conversations it worked OK, and I enjoyed understanding my wife’s rusty Spanish. Similarly, I had success rewatching Squid Game without subtitles. But without someone wearing their own pair and translating my English, it is one-way traffic.

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October 25, 2024
Oura Ring 4 reviews: 3 things people loved, and 2 things they really didn’t

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Oura’s got a new smart ring out. Let’s talk about it.

The release of the Oura Ring 4 brings the next generation of Oura’s popular wearable to the market. Many tech reviewers, such as Mashable’s Kim Gedeon, got some time with it and came away with plenty of thoughts. With competitors like the Samsung Galaxy Ring on sale now, Oura has to work to keep up with more recognizable brands. Instead of wasting any more time, here’s what reviewers are saying about the Oura Ring 4.

SEE ALSO:

Oura Ring 4 review: It’s got this edge over Apple Watch and Samsung Galaxy Ring

Oura Ring 4: 3 things reviewers liked

The good news is that just about everyone agrees that the Oura Ring 4 is really good. Here’s why:

Best-in-class health tracking

Oura has made its name with high-quality health tracking through a mobile app, and that is apparently no different here.

In fact, Oura redesigned the app, organizing all of its features into three distinct tabs that help streamline things, according to Victoria Song of The Verge. Beyond that, though, Song said the health tracking the watch does is impressively accurate considering the limitations of a tiny smart ring:

Mashable Light Speed

“All I can tell you is what I experienced in my own testing. The Oura Ring 4’s sleep and wake times align with my own manual testing logs. I still saw occasional gaps in nighttime heart rate, though it’s hard to say after only two weeks whether there were fewer or greater than before. My heart rate metrics, however, were all on par with my smartwatches — which is a good thing. Step counts and calorie estimates can be inflated compared to smartwatches, but that’s been true of every smart ring I’ve tested. What I can say for Oura, however, is its measurements are consistent and its margin of error is on the smaller side. After years of testing wearables, I trust the Oura Ring’s measurements for sleep and recovery tracking — in fact, I use it as a control for evaluating the sleep tracking features of other devices.”

More comfortable fit

One of the more profound design changes with the Oura Ring 4 is also very simple: The inside of the ring no longer has bumps on it.

Those existed in previous models for health tracking purposes, but Oura found a way to slim the ring down and smooth out the inner surface, so the bumps don’t dig into your skin anymore. Pretty much every review I read, including those from the Guardian and Wired, noted this change and pointed out that the ring is more comfortable to wear than before.

Improved battery life

It’s not exactly surprising to hear that a new version of an older device has a better battery than previous models, but it’s still welcome, nonetheless. Reports vary from one reviewer to the next, but generally speaking, everyone agrees that the battery in the Oura Ring 4 lasts longer than the one in the Oura Ring 3. Adrienne So of Wired had one particularly eye-catching testimonial:

“I get around three days of battery life with the Gen3. Right now, I am on the fourth day of wearing the Oura Ring 4 with, as I said, a pretty crazy amount of tracked physical activity through the weekend that included way too many hikes and a late-night outdoor music festival, and I still have what I would guess to be two to three more days of battery left. (I lead a pretty quiet life, but for some reason, whenever I test an Oura ring, I behave like an absolute maniac.)”

Oura Ring 4: 3 things reviewers didn’t like

No device is perfect, and so neither is the Oura Ring 4. Here are a couple of complaints reviewers had about it:

Subscription needed

One major annoyance that could lead someone to go with a Samsung or Apple wearable is that the Oura Ring needs to be paired with a $6/mo or $70/yr subscription to unlock every feature. Every review I read mentioned this because, well, it’s something that definitely needs to be mentioned. Whether or not that’s too much for you will vary from person to person, but just know that there’s a hidden cost to the Oura Ring 4.

Pricing problems

There’s also an issue regarding the pricing of the Oura Ring 4. Put simply, you might have to pay more if you want a particular finish for your ring, even if the ring you’re getting is functionally identical to cheaper ones with different finishes. Lisa Eadiciccio of CNET laid it all out:

“The Oura Ring 4 is available in six finishes: silver, black, brushed silver, stealth, gold and rose gold. But some finishes cost more than others. While silver and black are available at the $349 (£349, AU$569) starting price, brushed silver and stealth cost $399, and gold and rose gold are $499.”

Considering the gold version looks amazing (at least according to Mashable’s review, which is of course correct), that’s probably going to be disappointing for some potential customers. An extra $150 for a different color is a lot to ask of people.

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October 15, 2024
SaluSpa Ibiza Review: A Solid Place to Soak

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When I agreed to test a SaluSpa Ibiza hot tub for work (it’s a hard life, I know), I figured it would be a relatively simple process. I thought I’d just put it on my deck and fill ’er up—you can just put them anywhere, right? Wrong. At 222 gallons of water, this thing would weigh over 1 ton if you put two average-size adults in it, let alone the four to six that the gigantic box says it can hold.

So no, you can’t just place it on a deck, unless your deck is specifically built to withstand a literal ton of weight and water. In my backyard, straight on the grass, it would be. My going-to-native-prairie, raccoon-filled backyard, surrounded by shady oak trees with a penchant for raining branches and walnuts the second the wind hits more than 3 mph.

I figured I could just plug it in anywhere. Wrong again. Technically, it’s supposed to be on an isolated circuit. The manual recommends having a professional electrician come and set up an outlet dedicated to your hot tub and your hot tub alone. Even with the plug having built-in GCFI, similar to a hair dryer, you don’t want to mess around with mixing water and electricity. I just plugged it into a heavy-duty outdoor extension cord (another no-no, please do not do this) and crossed my fingers, running to unplug it from the wall on my back porch every time it rained because I was terrified of starting a fire—but not so terrified that I listened to the instructions in the first place. I digress.

Photograph: Louryn Strampe

Speaking of rain, I thought that the cover would protect my hot tub from the elements. Third time’s the charm—I was wrong again. The SaluSpa Ibiza has a nifty floating square that does give the tarplike cover some structure, but water, acorns, ants, and mosquito eggs still pooled on the top whenever it rained. In August in northern Illinois, this happens frequently. Don’t get me started on the earwigs. To quote World of Warcraft, I was not prepared. There were no string lights, no romantic citronella candles, no relaxing under the stars and watching the snow fall peacefully. I was a sweaty girl in the middle of a heat wave with a job to do.

And one other snafu—when the hot tub arrived in late December, I did not anticipate that two weeks later, I’d slip on ice and snap my ankle. Pesky Midwestern weather at it again. After months of rehabilitation, I finally got the tub set up in late summer—exactly the opposite time it would’ve been ideal to do so. None of these factors are a detriment to the hot tub itself. But my review requires several grains of salt.

On to the Lede

The SaluSpa Ibiza is easy to set up, but the instructions are bad. I followed a lot of the setup alongside this YouTube video and puzzled my way through the rest. You basically set up the pump, use it to inflate the 6-by-6-foot body of the tub and the floating cover, and then fill the tub up with water. The tarplike top cover snaps around the tub with carseat-style clasps that aren’t the easiest to unclip with wet hands, but that’s nitpicky. They work fine. My tub filled faster than I thought it would, in around 90 minutes, but it took nearly two days to heat up, even in the summer heat. I can imagine this would take much longer in the brutal Illinois winters.

Photograph: Louryn Strampe

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October 15, 2024
Rarebird Px Coffee Review: Alertness Without the Jitters

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Come 3 pm or so, I need my afternoon pick-me-up. While my heart wants a shot of espresso, my head knows it’s not a good idea so late in the day if I want to knock out at a normal hour. I usually settle for a matcha latte because it has less caffeine.

Then I was introduced to Rarebird Coffee, which allows me to brew that afternoon cup without it impacting my sleep. But it’s not decaf—Rarebird’s preroasted beans are infused with paraxanthine, which the company brands as “Px.” Px is a bit of an enigma, but we humans actually produce it every time we consume caffeine; caffeine is metabolized by enzymes and then converted into paraxanthine. With a shorter half-life than caffeine, Px is cleared out of the body much faster, which is why it’s unlikely to have a negative impact on your sleep like caffeine often does.

In a way, you can think of Px as the middle sibling of caffeine and decaf. It provides the alertness we desire from caffeine without the side effects like the dreaded crash, jitters, and anxiety that often follow. I am always highly skeptical about functional claims like this, but Rarebird does the trick. It’s real coffee that respects its tradition while carefully evolving the ritual.

Java Without the Jitters

Rarebird currently comes in two forms: a bag of ground beans (4 ounces, 12 ounces, or 2-pound options) and K-Cup pods, in medium or dark roast (dark roast is available only in 12-ounce bags). Each serving (6 grams of grounds, or one K-Pod) contains 60 milligrams of paraxanthine. I easily consume about two servings at once when I drink it in the morning. I tested the grounds by brewing them in a French press at home, but you can brew them just as you would any coffee grounds. I’ve been drinking it black to experience the most natural taste of the coffee. The infusion of Px does not impact the taste. The medium roast works well as a balanced roast with wide appeal and notes of chocolate and citrus. I personally like the dark roast more—it has a subtle hint of toasted marshmallow, which is warm and balances the roast very nicely. I would not know that this coffee was any different from traditional coffee aside from the way it made me feel afterward.

Photograph: Andrew Watman

The company recommends drinking it for at least five days in a row to feel its effects more fully. Honestly, I felt many of the positive effects after my first cup. I felt focused and got a lot of work done, certainly more than I would have if I didn’t have any coffee at all, and I got absolutely none of the heart-racing, jittery feeling I do with regular coffee. Even if you drink a lot of this, you’re not going to feel cracked out, but your attention span will likely increase. It’s a weird biohack, but it works. Another bonus—I didn’t feel it rush through my digestive system as I do with good regular coffee, if you know what I mean.

Not Your Average Bean

Rarebird Px Coffee was founded by Jeffrey Dietrich, a scientist who earned his PhD from UC Berkeley studying genetic engineering. His cofounder, AD Andracchio, is also no stranger to bringing innovative products to the market—she was part of the team that introduced Burger King’s Impossible Whopper.

The team has a patent pending on “green” Px coffee beans, which are first decaffeinated and then infused with Px prior to the roasting process. On the other hand, Rarebird’s current patented grounds are made from beans that get infused after they are roasted. The company’s future intention is to sell these green coffee beans to roasters to roast however they wish. For example, you may one day see your favorite coffee roaster sell a Px option that’s been engineered by Rarebird, in the same vein as seeing a decaf option on the menu. No other company would be able to do this due to Rarebird’s other patent on Px coffee. This all proves Rarebird is really a beverage tech company rather than just another coffee roaster due to its patent-pending infusion technology.

There are no added ingredients in the coffee—the only items on the ingredients list are Arabica coffee and paraxanthine, which is a synthesized version of the chemical (it’s not like they’re extracting it from peoples’ livers). The product has received a GRAS (generally recognized as safe) designation from the FDA.

An Excellent Addition

You cannot purchase whole beans from Rarebird at the moment. I’m hoping the company comes out with this option soon, because grinding your own beans is one of the simplest ways to elevate the taste and freshness of your coffee. The bag the grinds come in is a fresh, modern take on packaging. The matte white pouches have blue accents with Rarebird’s bird logo on the sides. They’re also recyclable and zippable, so they seal well, unlike most coffee bags.

Those jitters I get from regular coffee were nonexistent for me after drinking Rarebird, which was a huge bonus when I drank it late in the afternoon. As a caffeine drinker, though, I often like that feeling; it’s kind of what I’m looking for when I get my day started, so I personally am not going to be drinking Rarebird every morning. But come afternoon? This is when I really think this product is going to be great for every coffee-drinking consumer, no matter your sensitivity to caffeine.

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October 7, 2024
Sony Bravia Theater Quad Review: Crazy Immersion, Crazy Expensive

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The Voice Mode feature is similarly effective, using Sony’s Voice Zoom 3 to elevate dialog. Like the Sound Field, it’s not always useful and can create some balancing issues between the central channel and side-channel effects (more on that below), so you may want to keep it off until necessary.

Diving deeper into the settings lets you adjust things like compression for volume balancing, add or remove your Sony TV as the center channel, and even adjust the overall soundstage height, useful if you need to raise or lower the speakers due to setup limitations. I also appreciate the top window that reveals your current sound format (e.g., Dolby Atmos, 5.1 surround).

There are some missing features, both in the app and the hardware itself. On the app side, I was surprised to find no controls for EQ or individual channel levels. I think that’s by design, and with so much virtualization, I was happy to let Sony software take the wheel for channel balancing. Still, I’d love the ability to tweak the treble or raise the midrange to warm up the sound signature.

Photograph: Ryan Waniata

There are lots of available sound sources, but once again, there are some missing pieces. You can stream music over Bluetooth or Wi-Fi with Spotify Connect and AirPlay, but there’s no Chromecast support–odd for a company that makes Android phones. Sony also drops the optical port, opting for HDMI ARC/eARC only, and there’s not a single analog input. There’s reasoning behind each decision; optical is an older digital connection that doesn’t support 3D audio. On the analog side, Sony likely wanted to keep the system all digital, opting not to add an analog-to-digital converter in the small plastic control box. The takeaway is you can never add components like a CD player or turntable.

The single HDMI input also seems skimpy. Most top soundbars have at least two or three, while a traditional receiver might have five. On the plus side, the lone input supports HDMI 2.1 for gaming features like VRR (variable refresh rate) in 4K at 120 Hz, HDR and Dolby Vision pass-through, and more for connecting modern gaming systems. These features are becoming more common, but the Quad is among the first all-in-one setups to support them.

Hello From the Dome

The Quad is the best system of its kind I’ve ever heard when it comes to reproducing the spherical “dome of sound” for which 3D audio formats like Dolby Atmos are prized. It’s particularly good at height sounds, which are often the most difficult for smaller speakers to reproduce. The pouring rain in the “Amaze” scene from my Atmos demo disc was stunningly realistic, seeming to cover the entire room in pounding droplets.

Just as impressive is the system’s expansiveness and precision with 3D effects. Strafing starships and helicopters can be almost perfectly traced in space. Effects centralized behind me felt like I could reach back and grab them. Sound editors are given free rein with 3D formats, meaning they can move “sound objects” virtually anywhere in space, and the Quad takes full advantage of stellar test films like Ant-Man and Mad Max: Fury Road. It’s not on the same level as traditional systems with mounted speakers, but it scratches that itch well.

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October 5, 2024
We Staged a Debate to Test the Bluetooth Earrings Kamala Harris Didn’t Wear

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Just a few weeks ago, certain people in a particular corner of the internet decided they had cracked the reason Kamala Harris was doing so much better than Donald Trump in the presidential debate. Not that she was better prepared, nor that she was a better debater. No, she must be wearing a Bluetooth earpiece, carefully disguised as a pair of pearl earrings. Obviously.

As it turns out, earbuds like this really do exist. The Nova H1 audio earrings put forward by the conspiracy theorists do bear a decent resemblance to the earrings Kamala was wearing on the night. Of course hers were, in fact, from Tiffany & Co. and not from a Kickstarter campaign from 2021, but the concept piqued our interest all the same.

Could this so-called audio jewelry be the perfect crossover product for anyone who wants to make calls or listen to music, without a bulky pair of headphones or earbuds hanging out of their ear? We slapped them on our ears for a week to find out.

Stylish … to a Point

When I receive them, first impressions are promising. The Nova H1 arrive in what feels a bit like a jewelry box, a stylish detail we’re sure is no accident. Pull the inner packaging toward you, like a drawer, to slide the outer cover away, and the headphones appear against a rather striking yellow backdrop, the pearlescent square charging case adorned with Nova’s branding.

The case is plasticky though, and the earrings sit on an equally plasticky panel that rises up to present them to you as you open the lid. That’s a nice touch, but it all looks cheap and doesn’t feel in keeping with the premium look the Nova H1 is trying to present.

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The earrings themselves are not exactly subtle, either. The pearl, to my surprise, is actually a real freshwater pearl connected to your choice of clip-on or stud earring, but delicate it ain’t. Still, when clipped onto your ear they do at least look like jewelry—more costume jewelry than fine jewelry (our British readers may appreciate a Pat Butcher reference here), but they don’t look out of place. I have the silver ones to test, but there is also a gold option that will set you back a little more (more on that shortly.)

The clip-on version I’m testing offers exactly the right clamp force to be secure without causing any discomfort, which is indeed impressive. I could genuinely forget I was wearing them, meaning they can simply be worn as earrings, while being ready to jump into audio action whenever you need them.

That’s helped by the fact they will go into a dormant mode when they don’t detect any playback, and offer up to six hours in active use. That means you can pretty much get a full day’s wear out of them, plus the case offers three full charges.

Can You Hear Me?

When you take them out of their case, they jump into pairing mode automatically. My phone finds them without issue, and within seconds they’re paired.

I immediately head to a playlist in Tidal and get to listening. It quickly becomes clear that audio quality is not a reason to buy these headphones—so much so that it’s almost impossible to critically evaluate the sound at all.

Bass is weak, and music has a somewhere-in-the-distance quality, almost as if someone has the radio on across the office. It’s a unique experience, not unpleasant by any stretch but not at all as engaging as the sound quality you’ll get from something like the Bose Ultra Open Earbuds.

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October 1, 2024
De-Fi Platform Studio Review: A Good Compact Recording Desk

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Nine years ago I decided to get back to making music after a very long hiatus. In the beginning, my setup was extremely humble, featuring an aging ThinkPad and a cheap MIDI controller. I didn’t even have an audio interface for properly recording my guitar.

Since then, well, things have gotten a bit out of hand. My synth collection grew from a couple toys (a Casio VL-1 and a Stylophone) to well over a dozen instruments. I have more MIDI controllers than any human could ever need. I picked up decent studio monitors, an audio interface, and even some ADAT expansions so I could keep more of my ever growing gear collection permanently connected.

One thing that didn’t change, however, was my desk. Up until just a couple of weeks ago, I was still making do with the same cheap Ikea Lagkapten/Alex combo ($220). It was a large desk, but it didn’t give me a lot of flexibility for laying out my setup. Now that I’ve had an opportunity to check out the updated version of De-Fi’s Platform Studio Production Desk, which has dedicated mounting points for rack gear, space for speakers, and a pull-out keyboard tray, I don’t know that I can ever go back. If you’re in the market for an affordable studio desk for your music-making and are trying to decide between cheaper options and a dedicated desk like this one, read on.

Getting Settled

For all of its aesthetic angles and recording studio glamour, the Platform Desk, which was originally made by a brand called Output that has now rebranded to De-Fi, still goes together like Ikea furniture. It’s a piece of flatpack that you need to assemble with the aid of a screwdriver and an Allen wrench. It’s definitely more substantial than your average Malm piece (what with it being made out of plywood instead of particle board), but the basic concept is the same.

Photograph: Terrence O’Brien

As hard as it is to believe, one area where Ikea does have a leg up on De-Fi is the quality of the instructions. There is a video walk-through of the assembly that is OK, but it could be more detailed. The “print” version, well, don’t bother printing it. For whatever reason, it’s formatted as a single-page PDF when it should clearly be five or six. When you try to print it out you end up with a narrow, illegible strip down the middle of a single piece of paper.

The parts list also failed to mention that there was a power drill bit for the hex screws in one of the bags. I only discovered it halfway through assembly, after my hands were aching and I’d stripped a few screws with the Allen wrench.

It’s also worth mentioning a couple of small quality-control issues I encountered during assembly. The shelf pin holes for the top level were missing on one side, and I had to drill them in myself. And some of the edges weren’t particularly neat. I even got a pretty nasty splinter from the lip of the desktop.

Living in Tight Spaces

There was one pretty obvious con once everything was fully assembled: the size of this desk. I live in NYC, so space is at a premium, and fitting the 60-inch-wide by 38-inch-deep desk was difficult. Folks with a lot of space won’t have the same issue, but it’s worth looking into the size before ordering. My home studio is also my office and my guest bedroom; it was a bit cramped to begin with. Previously there was enough room to walk between the unfolded pullout couch and my desk. Now even my chair won’t fit between the desk and the foot of the pullout. In order to make room for the desk, I had to ditch my monitor stands (the desk has elevated spaces for monitors to be placed).

Another immediately obvious con is that the Platform Desk has no drawers. Granted, studio desks generally don’t, but it did mean I had to keep around the Alex drawer unit from my old desk for typical desk-y storage. The total floor space taken up by my revamped recording area had suddenly exploded.

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September 26, 2024
‘Delete this garbage’: Marques Brownlee gets negative reviews on his new tech venture

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Marques Brownlee, also known as MKBHD, is a tech-focused content creator with nearly 20 million YouTube subscribers, renowned for his reviews of the latest gadgets.

He has dunked on the likes of the Humane Ai Pin and the Rabbit R1 with titles like “The Worst Product I’ve Ever Reviewed” and “Barely Reviewable,” but praised the Apple Vision Pro (despite calling it flawed), OnePlus 12, and other products.

However, the seasoned, and arguably respected, tech reviewer recently released a new wallpaper app called Panels. And if X (formerly Twitter) is anything to go by (and the Apple App Store reviews), the reception for the app has been poor.

Even Jesse Lyu, the CEO behind Rabbit R1, appeared to display some schadenfreude over the wave of criticism Brownlee has faced online, sharing the following meme with his followers.

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The meme depicts Brownlee as the grim reaper, poking fun at how some critics perceive the YouTuber as a “startup killer” with his candid reviews. (When Brownlee reviewed the Humane Ai Pin, for example, there was chatter about whether his harshness thwarts the growth of small-time gadget makers.)

The meme shows Humane Ai Pin co-founder Imran Chaudhri, Lyu, and Apple CEO Tim Cook being victims of Brownlee’s sharp tongue. Interestingly, the last person of the lineup is Brownlee himself, implying that the YouTuber’s latest venture should be subjected to his own brutal critiques.

MKBHD’s new Panels app gets poor reviews

It’s not just Lyu, however, who has been trolling Brownlee. The Panels app, revealed in Brownlee’s new iPhone 16 review video, is designed to offer a curated collection of high-res wallpapers from artists.

Credit: Apple

“I’m so pumped to be launching this app!” Brownlee said in a Sept. 23 X post. “People have asked where I get wallpapers FOREVER, so this is the answer, now and forever: PANELS!”

However, the replies underneath Brownlee’s post don’t appear to match his enthusiasm.

Mashable Light Speed

“Pretty disappointed in this,” Ian Zelbo said. “Doesn’t have the polish / design I’d expect. Seems like something that’s been on the App Store already that you slapped your name on. Ads everywhere and it just all feels like a cash grab to me”

“The app is trash, you can get better, high-res wallpapers for free right here and many other accounts on X,” Corbin Williams said.

“This damages your brand,” said Alex Kehr. “It’s crazy that the #1 tech reviewer known for advocating for quality and usefulness would release a cash-grab subscription app with terrible UI design, filled with ads, and offering mediocre wallpapers.”

“Delete this garbage and pretend it was a joke,” bl0rq suggested.

Based on the replies, as The Verge pointed out, it appears that users are unhappy that the iOS version of Panels asks whether it can track users’ activity. One of the data points that it reportedly monitors is location. (Though, as you’ll read later, Brownlee refutes this claim.)

On top of that, the app requires users to sign up for a $49.99 annual subscription or an $11.99-per-month membership. There are some wallpapers you can access for free, but only a few — and they’re in standard definition (not high-res). But first, to access them, users have to watch two advertisements.

“$50/yr for WALLPAPERS?! And not a single high-res wallpaper downloadable for free with ads? Love team MKBHD and all, but that’s crazy,” Nevan said.

“Half of your reviews are like ‘uh it’s expensive and it doesn’t really do anything’ lol you should review yourself,” cometcalls said.

MKBHD responds to feedback

As a result of the feedback, Brownlee posted a tweet on Sept. 24 that, in part, said, “I hear you!”

In response to privacy concerns, Brownlee said the following: “First thing we’re doing is fixing the excessive data disclosures, as people rightfully brought up. For transparency, we’d never actually ask for your location, internet history, etc. The data disclosures (that everyone is screenshotting) is likely too broad, and largely driven by what the ad networks suggest.”

In regards to pricing, Brownlee said that delivering value for the premium version is a personal challenge — and he plans to dial back ad frequency for the free experience, with more updates to come.

The Panels app isn’t MKBHD’s first foray into an entrepreneurial venture. For example, Brownlee has collaborated with Atoms for a sneaker line as well as accessories maker Ridge.

The road ahead for Brownlee’s Panels app seems uncertain, but with a dedicated following and a promise of improvements, there’s still hope for redemption.

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September 26, 2024
MSI Stealth 18 AI Studio A1V Review: No AI Needed

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I was able to max out at 120 frames per second while playing Doom Eternal on Ultra settings, and even got around 70 fps in Starfield on Medium. Starfield dropped down to a still-playable 50 fps on Ultra, though I got it up to 80 fps on Ultra by enabling frame generation. I’m not a fan of this feature as it can sometimes lead to some weird smoothing effects—to my mind, it hits the same nerve as motion smoothing on TVs—but your mileage may vary.

In terms of battery life, your best bet is to keep your charger nearby for gaming sessions. The nearly 100-watt-hour battery is massive, but so is the power draw. It lasted around three hours of heavy gaming, and closer to six to seven hours with more typical use.

These limitations make the MSI Stealth 18 best suited to being a workhorse laptop you can play games on at the end of the day. Running media editing apps like DaVinci Resolve and Blender was smooth, and I rarely noticed performance problems while working on it. Most gaming laptops would run similarly with comparable GPUs, but the new Meteor Lake CPU gives you a bit of future-proofing. Companies like Blackmagic are working on adding support for NPUs generally, so if there’s an area where Intel’s NPU is likely to be used in the future, it’s likely media creation first.

There might be better laptops purely for gaming—the Razer Blade 18, for example, trades a lower-resolution screen for a whopping 300-Hz refresh rate. But if you’d rather have one powerful laptop for work and play, the Stealth 18 is a solid investment.

All the Right Extras

The design of the Stealth 18 feels a little bit more gam3r than I like, but I can live with it for all the extra little touches MSI has put in this thing. For starters, it comes with a NumPad. I don’t care what anyone else says, NumPads are great, and I appreciate that there’s a powerful gaming laptop with one. It’s most handy while doing various video editing tasks, less for gaming, but if you’re like me, you’ll appreciate its presence.

The rest of the keyboard is similarly delightful. The font on the keys looks strikingly similar to the font Sony inexplicably used for both PlayStation and Spider-Man branding back in the aughts. The chiclet-style keys are flat, with no dimples, but they’re raised enough to feel easy to distinguish while typing, though my most common mistake was hitting the new and largely unnecessary Copilot key, which takes up room near the space bar. The trackpad is super smooth. It could be a bit bigger, but I only wished this while connected to a second monitor.

Photograph: Eric Ravenscraft

There’s an Ethernet port, HDMI port, and the proprietary charging port on the rear of the device, which is an incredibly convenient location for plugging the laptop into a desk workstation. It’s not quite as convenient as a laptop docking station, but it’s less cluttered than cables sticking out the sides. I’m also a fan of the dedicated fingerprint sensor, which makes it easier to sign in to Windows and unlock password managers.

Overall, the MSI Stealth 18 is a powerhouse, even without the NPU. At $3,300 for the RTX 4080 model, you can save a few hundred dollars compared to comparably-specced (minus the refresh rate) laptops like the Razer Blade 18. Just make sure to keep your wall charger handy.

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September 25, 2024