Category: Gadgets

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…

Tested Technology is proactive on your behalf. We go out into the consumer marketplace actively seeking devices (mostly, software sometimes) that are going to be of interest to you. Occasionally, manufacturers seek us out. This has started to happen more often, now that the publication is gaining momentum. But we’re not a manufacturer’s showcase and our time is yours, not theirs. However, when the Chinese manufacturer, Meross, contacted us we paid attention. They make good… Now read on…

This review is something of an outlier. Tested Technology takes a catholic view of its remit to present products to its readers: we’ve covered everything from a single USB cable, to fidget spinners, to complexly capable computing equipment. All, it is to be hoped, at arm’s length from the manufacturer and with the interest of the reader solely in mind. Products arrive from manufacturers, queuing up to be reviewed, some on loan, many are donations.… Now read on…

Shortly before my 77th birthday, I treated the Tested Technology office (and therefore myself) to an electric recliner. But my dream of spending my declining years, er, reclining, was shattered by an email offer from the US company Varidesk Inc of one of their front-line products to install, test out and, if I so chose, retain for permanent use. Varidesk’s timing was uncanny. Within a few days of luxuriating in the pushbutton-controlled comfort of my… Now read on…

Back in the day when I was writing television scripts (bear with me, this will turn out to be relevant) I learnt about cliffhangers. At the end of an episode you leave the audience wanting to come back for the next helping. A cliffhanger can’t just be a narrative trick—through some freak our hero escapes and all is well again. The “in one bound he was free” solution leaves the punters feeling cheated. So for… Now read on…

The traditional dedicated camera has one huge advantage over the smartphone you’re starting to use to take all your pictures. Its large lens captures a lot more light. But your phone’s always with you. These days that camera you may have paid several hundred pounds for a few years ago is quite likely to be stuck in a drawer somewhere.  The handy, always-with-you aspect of smartphones isn’t their only advantage over traditional cameras. Crucially, your phone… Now read on…

Just when you thought tech was hitting peak techitude, with near-supercomputers modestly called “smartphones” fitting into your shirt pocket, along comes—the fidget spinner! No processor, no RAM, no Bluetooth. We’re back to the basics of ball-bearings, and that’s it. The origin of the fidget spinner is a sweet-sour fairytale (see below). A related device, climbing on the shoulders of the fidget spinner’s success, has a comparable roller-coaster history. This is the Fidget Cube, a device… Now read on…

You can pick up cheap reading glasses everywhere, where “cheap” is a variable anything upward of 99p. My house is full of them, if only because I need different focal lengths for different tasks. I work about a foot and a half away from my phone, and around two feet away from my laptop screen, and I need different strength glasses just for those two tasks. Threading needles (yes, I seem to have been elected… Now read on…