Author: Chris Bidmead

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The TerraMaster 2-bay NAS Meets Seagate’s New Massive drives (part 3)

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Up until version 5 of its NAS operating system, Terramaster appeared to be concentrating on the hardware side of the business. Its machines are well-built and designed to last. The software, though, was basic, lacking applications and no match for the Taiwanese offerings from QNAP and Synology. TOS 5 changes all that. The new version of the operating system has sweeping ambitions. Transcoding movies, running AI on photo collections to do automatic categorising, offering a… Now read on…

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The TerraMaster 2-Bay NAS meets Seagate’s New Massive Drives (part 2)

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At the end of June, Terramaster finally released its first production version of TOS 5, the operating system for the Terramaster series of network attached storage (NAS) devices. In part 1 of this review we discussed our early dabbling with the “Insider Preview” version of TOS 5. It was our hope that with the arrival of the production version the reservations about Terramaster we listed in part 1 would evaporate. This is largely what has happened.  The… Now read on…

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The TerraMaster 2-Bay NAS meets Seagate’s New Massive Drives (part 1)

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Tested Technology has a couple of entry-level two-Bay NAS devices, sent to us by the Chinese manufacturer, Terramaster. Why two? Although the two machines are almost physically identical, one—the F2-210—is ARM-based while the other—the F2-221—uses an Intel x86 processor. Functionally they’re very similar, both using TerraMaster’s Linux-based TOS operating system. One difference is power consumption, the F2-210 being rather more economical on juice (see section Power Consumption below). There’s also a big difference in the… Now read on…

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Pure Redux: The Evoke Play DAB Radio

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Britain has pioneered many new technologies, created new markets, but—in the last century and this—has typically failed to follow through. The brand name “Pure” tells this whole story in miniature. At the end of the last century a high tech company appropriately called Imagination Technologies emerged from a pioneering UK manufacturer of graphics and audio systems previously known as Videologic. The new name was inspired by its strategic decision to pull out of loss-making physical… Now read on…

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More Adventures with Water: MySoda Woody

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Our recent piece about distilled and filtered water seems to have triggered some interest in the subject in general. As we’ve hinted before, there’s a vast amount of dangerous misinformation about water washing around the Internet. Much of this propaganda is designed to sell you various kinds of special (and expensive) bottled waters or devices to remove alleged evil substances from the stuff coming out of your tap. With some non-trivial exceptions, in the main… Now read on…

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ZeroWater Meets the WassenDalek

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The “interesting times” we’re hoping shortly to emerge from have given us cause to think earnestly about our life-styles. Devices to help us live cleaner, healthier lives are currently enjoying particularly—well—healthy sales. The pandemic has given us cause to question everything: about how we interact socially, how we travel, how we prepare our food. It has even cast doubt on the quality of water we drink. Do you drink your water straight from the tap?… Now read on…

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The GT2 Pro: The One to Watch (part 2)

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Tested Technology has never rushed to publish its reviews. We regard it as fundamental that before we go to press we’ve not only tested out the product’s features but have also kicked it around long enough to relay to readers a good idea of what it will be like to live with. One corollary of this is that we expect other publications to beat us to the punch with many of the products we write… Now read on…

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The RedMi Note 10 Pro—A Budget Flagship? Part 2

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The big question arising here, I suppose, is: does qualification as a “flagship” smartphone mandate a first-class camera array? Or is good-enough good enough? As I hinted in part 1, there’s not a lot of point spending extra money on a wizard camera array that you won’t be competent to deploy. If it’s ok at its day job and perhaps rather less competent in low light but night shots aren’t in your repertoire anyway, nothing… Now read on…

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The RedMi Note 10 Pro—A Budget Flagship? Part 1

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Smartphones are getting smarter. And some of the smartest are also getting cheaper. Phones with features that would have put them in the flagship class three years ago are now hitting the market at mid-range prices. Which raises a question about today’s flagship phones. Are they really offering that much extra value for their asking prices of £900 and above? Tested Technology has a perspective on this that you may not share, so it would… Now read on…

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The BeHear Proxy Nearfield Soundscape

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A decent stereo pair of loudspeakers can set you back hundreds of pounds. Or, if you’re a serious hi-fi aficionado, (and rich) tens of thousands of pounds. This is one reason why, back in those old bed-sitter student days of the ’60s, I developed a preference for headphones. You could get decent quality sound from them for an affordable price. These days we have a couple of respectable loudspeaker sound systems here at Tested Technology… Now read on…