Reviews - Page 20

Thunderbolt 3 docks continue to flood the market, and today I'm taking a look at IOGEAR's Thunderbolt 3 Quantum Docking Station. IOGEAR's dock offers many of the same features typically seen on other Thunderbolt 3 docks, including multiple USB ports, a Gigabit Ethernet port, headphone and microphone jacks, a DisplayPort port, and a pair of Thunderbolt 3 ports to allow for daisy chaining, all in a ...

Some of the more interesting types of smart home devices are thermostats, which can help save energy by optimizing scheduling, automatically sensing when the home is occupied or vacant, and more. One of the early entrants into the field on the HomeKit side is Honeywell, which has introduced several different smart thermostats, starting with the second-generation Lyric Round, which debuted early...

iDevices was one of the first companies to announce plans for producing HomeKit-compatible products, focusing primarily on switches and outlets but also branching out a bit with a thermostat. Earlier this year, iDevices was acquired by major electrical equipment manufacturer Hubbell, but the iDevices brand and product lineup lives on. I've been using a number of iDevices products, including...

Over the past few months, I've taken a look at a number of Thunderbolt 3 docks that all hit the market around the same time, including models from OWC, CalDigit, Belkin, and Kensington. There's at least one more major player in the market, so today I'm sharing my thoughts on Elgato's $300 Thunderbolt 3 Dock. Elgato's dock has a lot in common with many of its competitors, including a slim...

Introduced earlier this year, the Bamboo Sketch is Wacom's latest precision stylus designed to work with the iPhone and the iPad over Bluetooth. It's meant to mimic the feel of traditional pen-and-paper writing and drawing with interchangeable pen nibs and customizable shortcut buttons. Priced at $80, Wacom's new stylus isn't a better option than the Apple Pencil for iPad Pro users, but for...

ElevationLab's latest product is the BatteryPro, an Apple Watch and iPhone charger that's got some clever design elements and a built-in Apple Watch charging puck for convenience. Priced at $99, the BatteryPro isn't cheap, but if you value ease of use over cost, it's worth checking out. At first glance, the BatteryPro doesn't look like much. It's similar in design to many external battery...

Smart wireless earphones company Bragi has been making waves in the "hearables" market since 2014, when it debuted a Kickstarter for The Dash, the company's original pair of truly wireless intelligent earphones that subsequently launched to the public in early 2016. After numerous Bragi OS updates to The Dash, and the lower-priced, lower-specced launch of The Headphone, this year Bragi revealed...

Earlier this week, Kensington launched its entry into the Thunderbolt 3 dock market with its SD5000T Thunderbolt 3 Docking Station, an enterprise-focused accessory that incorporates a couple of unique features in the form of a Kensington lock slot and the ability to mount the dock to the rear of VESA-compatible displays for "Zero Footprint Mounting" with a separate bracket accessory. I've...

CalDigit's Tuff line of rugged USB-C external drives have been a great option for those looking to take extra storage or backups on the go for a while now, but in addition to the existing 2 TB model using a 5400 rpm spinning hard drive, the company recently expanded the line to include a 1 TB solid-state drive option. At a list price of $499, the solid-state drive version is not cheap, but...

With the flood of full-featured Thunderbolt 3 docks about to hit the market, it's time to take a look at Belkin's Thunderbolt 3 Express Dock HD, one of the major contenders users have been waiting for in addition to the OWC Thunderbolt 3 Dock and CalDigit TS3 that we've also recently reviewed. As with the other docks we've looked at, Belkin's offering includes a variety of ports and even charging ...

Elgato recently updated its Eve lineup of HomeKit-connected products with the Eve Degree, a temperature and humidity sensor that joins the existing Eve Weather and the Eve Room. Priced at $69.99, the Eve Degree feels like an iteration of the cheaper Eve Weather. It monitors temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure like the Eve Weather, but it's smaller, better designed, and it...

While Apple's latest MacBook Pro with support for Thunderbolt 3 has been out for over six months, the first full-featured Thunderbolt 3 docks are only just now starting to hit the market. Last month we took a look at OWC's Thunderbolt 3 Dock that should begin shipping out very shortly, and today we're taking a look at a pair of similar docks from CalDigit that help expand the capabilities of the...

Earlier this month, Apple purchased its first company that develops health-related hardware, Beddit. Beddit makes an iPhone-connected Sleep Monitor that tracks a wide range of sleep-related metrics, from heart rate and sleep time to room temperature and respiration. When Apple acquires a company, the company in question typically shuts down and stops selling whatever product it makes as Apple...

ExoLens and Zeiss have teamed up to create some high-quality lenses designed to take iPhone photography to the next level. At $200, the ExoLens PRO with Optics by Zeiss Wide-Angle Kit for the iPhone 7 and iPhone 7 Plus is almost the price you'd pay for a standalone camera, but the lens is distortion free, compact, and enhances the range of images you can capture with your iPhone. There are...

Introduced in January, the PD2710QC from BenQ is the first USB-C display that comes equipped with an integrated USB Type-C dock, which offers an array of ports for MacBook and MacBook Pro owners. The 27-inch display is aimed at designers and engineers, offering a 2560 x 1440 resolution with support for 100 percent sRGB color accuracy and specific modes for use with CAD and animation software. ...

Last November, longtime Mac vendor OWC was among the first wave of companies to announce Thunderbolt 3 docks designed to expand the capabilities of the new MacBook Pro. It's taken a while to finalize the product design, testing, and manufacturing, but OWC's Thunderbolt 3 Dock is now just about ready to ship and we've had a chance to spend some time with a production-ready unit. Priced at...

Connected home security cameras have been on the market for quite some time, but D-Link recently began selling the first HomeKit-compatible security camera. Priced competitively at $199, the D-Link Omna 180 Cam HD camera has several perks over competing cameras that don't offer HomeKit integration -- it's guaranteed to have Apple's required level of encryption, it works with Siri, and it can...

Redesigning an input device is a risky business. When Apple introduced its latest MacBooks, some users complained that the new butterfly mechanism in the keys was a turnoff. They criticized the keyboard for its lack of travel, and said the experience of typing was not much different to tapping on a touch screen. Other users felt okay with the change. Whichever side people fell on the debate,...

We've already looked at LG's UltraFine 5K and 27UD88 displays as companions for Apple's latest notebooks, and today we're taking a look at another USB-C display option that brings something quite different: LG's 38UC99 curved "UltraWide" display. This is a desk-filling display in the truest sense of the term: 37.5 inches on the diagonal with a 21:9 aspect ratio and a native resolution of...

Headphone jack controversies aside, Apple's cord-free AirPods have contributed to a recent surge of interest in "truly wireless" earphones, with several companies vying for a piece of the market. Denmark-based audio outfit Jabra has embraced the freedom-of-movement appeal of wireless buds more than most with its Elite Sport headphones ($250), which it calls "the most technically advanced true ...