Innholdsfortegnelse for November 2019 i T3

Our mission is to bring you the clearest recommendations we can – and that means a great deal of hard work happens before a product even reaches our pages! Because we only feature products the T3 team would happily use ourselves, we end up discarding a significant number of options in each category before settling on a final shortlist to review. We select only the best of the best for our Tested section; the gear we know you’ll want to seriously consider purchasing. And that should mean an end to you having to undertake hours of painstaking research and product comparisons You won’t see any duff products, but you will come away with clarity on which one is the best in its category or for a specific task: our awards…

1 RAINS MAC COAT If you wear suits to work and want your outer layer to look equally smart, try the Rains Mac Coat. It’s quilted for extra warmth. £189, rains.com 2 SHACKLETON EREBUS JACKET Do you feel the cold easily? Go for the mega-insulated Erebus Jacket, filled with 100% pure European goose down and designed to perform down to -10 degrees. £675, shackletonlondon.com 3 A.P.C. HOODED MILITARY COAT Made from over 50% virgin wool, this military style parka is smartlooking and warm, with a mid-thigh cut adding extra coverage. £470, farfetch.com/uk 4 MR P SHEARLING TRIMMED BOMBER Can’t live without a bomber jacket, regardless of the weather? Then choose an extra warm one, like this thick leather, ribbed wool-blend and cosy shearling number. £875, mrporter.com 5 OMC DOUBLE BREASTED…

AMAZON KINDLE PAPERWHITE Take thousands of books on your next holiday with this slimline ereader. The display’s brightness can be dialled up if you’re reading in stark sunlight. Battery life is ace. £119.99, amazon.co.uk APPLE iPAD MINI The latest iPad Mini weighs around 300g, making it ideal for sketching, drawing and doodling while travelling. A 10-hour battery life gives you plenty of time to create. From £399, apple.com/uk NEO SMARTPEN M1 Want to write a travel journal while exploring the world? The M1 works like a normal pen, but when used with an app it digitises your work, turning handwritten notes into digital text for editing. £89, thesmartpenshop.com…

ADIDAS DOOR GYM A cost-effective, space efficient and versatile door pull up bar (the max load is 110kg). The Door Gym has three grip positions and is height adjustable, so you can tailor it to the door space you have. A convenient (and cheap) way to build upper body strength. £26, amazon.co.uk LIFORME YOGA MAT Talk about small home gym gear – simply unfurl this eco-friendly yoga mat when you want to practise yoga, to stretch or do body strength training, then roll it up and stick it under your bed when finished. Line markings on the mat help you align correctly for popular poses. £100, liforme.com ROGUE MONSTER RESISTANCE BANDS Resistance training is one of the fastest ways to burn fat and build muscle. Resistance bands also take up…

“Try the world’s fastest mouse,” they said. “It’s really, really fast,” they continued, “and it’s also fast.” Thus Mr eSports ended up the custodian of an Endgame Gear XM1 (£54), a mouse which really does achieve absurd, and very fast, fastness through a combination of a 16,000 CPI optical eye from PixArt, some super-slippy PTFE feet, apparently handpicked Omron switches, and some kind of analogue magic inside which pulls switch polling below 1ms. If you’re not worried about flashing lights, soft silicon edges and billion-button configurations, it’s a mouse that lets you get on with mousing – and it’s smooth as silk with it. Very nice. And fast. GaGu has long been picked on by his wife for his slightly clumsy nature. But she is so wrong. Look, that ceramic…

BEST FOR SCREEN SIZE HISENSE H65AE6100UK In terms of picture per pound, Hisense has this category sewn up. This 65-inch model gives you a big, bright picture, and costs less than a mid-range phone. There’s a 4K panel, of course, and it presents Ultra HD pictures with great levels of detail – you won’t just get a big screen here, you’ll also make the most of it. HDR is supported in the standard HDR10 and HLG forms – this is the core of what you need for now and the future of HDR broadcasts. The picture quality is pretty damn impressive considering the price: you’ll get rich colours, solid contrast and stable image processing. It’s obviously not going to be groundbreaking compared to expensive tellies, but there’s little to complain…

BARGAIN 8K SAMSUNG QE55Q950R Yep, this really is an 8K TV for the price of a (highend) 4K one. And we’re not talking cut corners here – Samsung has just been really aggressive about making 8K realistic for people. At 55 inches, you’re not getting the impact of those 33 million pixels in the way you would with Samsung’s bigger 82-inch model, say, but there’s magic in being able to move right up to the panel and still not be able to see the dots. As we alluded to earlier, the tech inside is very similar to the Samsung Q90R, including a full array backlight, but here it’s even more impressive: it’s rated to go around 50% brighter for HDR highlights, with just as impressive black levels, so the depth…

SONOS BEAM £399, sonos.co.uk WE’RE IMPRESSED Serves up excellent sound with music and movies alike. Very compact and easy to set up. Also an excellent Amazon Echo, Google Home and/or Sonos multi-room speaker. Can be expanded into a 5.1 system, if you’re flush. WE’D IMPROVE Sonos’s app has so many features that it’s become sprawling and tricky to navigate at times. No support for DTS audio if you do decide to ‘go 5.1’ and certainly no Atmos. THE LAST WORD Far more than a way to get better sound out of your TV – although it’ll do that in spades – the Beam is a great, all-round audio product and a home AI to boot. VIZIO SB36512-F6 £599, vizio.com WE’RE IMPRESSED A complete, and very good, Atmos/DTS system for under…

WHAT IS IT? Chinese company OnePlus has been putting out impressive smartphones since 2014, offering flagship-level specs and features at prices to undercut the bigger names in the market. Over the last five years, the prices of OnePlus phones have crept up, but OnePlus has also got better at making these phones too, which brings us to the OnePlus 7 Pro 5G. As its name rather gives away, it’s the 5G version of the rather excellent OnePlus 7 Pro, the flagship OnePlus phone for 2019 (at least at the time of writing). It gives you a spacious 6.67-inch display with a 1440x3120 pixel resolution, a Snapdragon 855 processor, and a triple-lens 48MP+16MP+8MP rear camera around the back. Oh, and the selfie camera pops up from the top of the phone…

WHAT IS IT? Samsung really is going all-in on the 5G: this is the second and not the last of the Samsung phones in our round-up, and the big selling point of the Galaxy Note10+ 5G (as with the 4G version) is the stylus that you get with the handset and which slides smoothly into the phone itself when not in use. This is just about the most powerful, feature-packed phone that Samsung currently makes, and considering the breadth and depth of its range, that’s saying something. The phone features a sizeable 6.8-inch, 1440x3040 pixel display, Samsung’s latest Exynos 9825 processor, and a quad-lens 16MP+12MP+12MP+time-of-flight sensor camera around the back. As yet, the 5G version of the standard 6.3-inch Note10 isn’t available in the UK – we find that to…

While teaching at the Albany Academy, Mathematics and Natural Philosophy professor Joseph Henry dabbled in a little physics and happened to discover self-inducting currents. Thus followed a period of experimentation with electromagnets, and somewhere around 1831 he found a novel way to apply this newfound knowledge: by stringing a mile of wire around a classroom, attaching a bell to one end and an actuator to the other. The bell rang: he had invented the electric doorbell as we know it. Sure, the doorbell was one of Henry’s least notable inventions (his work on the electrical relay basically gave life to the telegraph, creating modern communication as we know it) but it was so incredibly sound that its fundamentals barely changed for nearly two centuries. Even today, many of us have…

Want a really smart front door? While those in the doorbell market work on their latest innovations, there are other devices that can add a whole bunch of functionality to your ingress – primary of which is a smart lock. Amazon’s smart lock system allows you to get into your home with only your phone, and naturally integrates with the Ring ecosystem to unlock the door to callers in-app. Multiple manufacturers are on board, notably Schlage, Yale and Kwikset, each of which is offering a deadbolt that can accept passcode entry, a bitted key, or wireless unlocking. In the US, Amazon offers a service called Key, in which drivers to drop packages off inside your door. Nest’s smart locking escapades have been a little more limited thus far, stretching only…

From £729 apple.com/uk The iPhone 11 is £300 cheaper and one camera lighter than the iPhone 11 Pro, but it’s no budget device. You’ve a top-tier dual-lens camera, generous 6.1-inch screen, sleek glass and metal design, nextgen Face ID security, the most powerful phone processor on the planet and big battery life… It’s a seriously great package. One thing you don’t have, though, is an OLED display. This iPhone has a ‘Liquid Retina’ LCD display, which is just Apple’s way of saying it’s a very nice LCD with curved corners. It’s 828x1792, which makes it fairly low resolution compared to a lot of rivals, but with a pixel density of 329ppi it’s still easily sharp enough to look great. However, it isn’t HDR-rated and it’s just over half as bright…

From £399, apple.com/uk The Apple Watch Series 5 takes everything that made the Series 4 so good, sprinkles on a few extra features, and then cruelly replaces it with this superior model. The stand-out new feature is an always-on screen, which means you don’t have to raise your wrist for the screen to show something: it will still show your watch face or workout at all times, just dimmed. New screen tech, a low-power display controller and S5 processor that has all kinds of extra power management features all combine to mean that the Watch’s screen can run a refresh rate of just once per second (rather than the usual 60 times per second of most screens) and be powered at all times without killing battery life. In practice, what…

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1 XIAOMI MI MIX ALPHA £2,250 (approx.), mi.com Worried about how much screen time you’re having? Then you probably won’t want the new 5G concept phone from Xiaomi. The Mi MIX Alpha’s display covers almost the entirety of the handset, offering an incredible 180.6% screen-to-body ratio, a figure that only makes sense if you squint quite hard. Clearly, the Chinese company’s objective with this phone was to provoke awe and wonder, and it certainly achieves this in the photography department: the Mi MIX Alpha not only rocks a 108-megapixel camera – developed in collaboration with Samsung and capable of taking photos at a mind-blowing 12032x9024 resolution – it also features an enormous 1/1.33 sensor, which will help you to capture dazzling photos in low-light conditions. Powering all this screen and…

Invest in the highest quality winter scarf you can afford and you won’t have to shop around each year looking for a worthy replacement, which is also good news for the planet. And if money is no object to you, Balenciaga’s luxurious new Logo Check Wool Scarf is worthy of your investment. Take one home and you can enjoy wrapping up in over 281 square inches of super-soft, naturally insulating pure wool. This is the perfect material to keep you warm during winter, year after year. Balenciaga’s timeless scarf is finished with subtle fringing and adopts a tonal palette of white, grey and black, so it will work with a large portion of your wardrobe. The brand’s logo is only printed on one side, so you know which way to…

PURE HIGHWAY 600 Pairing with your phone or tablet, the Highway 600 enables you not only to safely make and receive calls, but also listen to DAB digital radio and source music from streaming services such as Spotify. It’s attractive, too. £159.99, pure.com SUPERTOOTH BUDDY Attaching to your sun visor, this sleek gadget can pair with two phones simultaneously. Its noise- and echocancelling microphone ensures that you can hear and be heard while driving, and there’s 20 hours of talk time to enjoy. £49.99, supertooth.net JABRA FREEWAY Jabra claims that the three-speaker virtual surround sound on its Bluetooth hands-free set is so clear, you’ll feel like the person you’re speaking to is actually in the car with you. The Freeway also streams music through your car stereo. £84.99, jabra.co.uk…

BETTER THAN OLED SAMSUNG QE65Q90R What you’re getting here, with a few small technical tweaks, is a lot of Samsung’s most advanced tech from its 8K TVs (see p52), but with a 4K panel instead. The result is so good, it single-handedly broke the idea that the best TVs of the future would be OLED: Samsung’s QLED tech is the business. A direct backlight is applied here, and it’s incredibly powerful, pushing brightness levels way beyond anything a cheaper LCD can manage. But it’s also capable of incredibly precise dimming, producing almost totally black blacks… the result is an unmatched contrast range, making HDR that looked good on other TVs look simply mind-blowing here. Detail is incredible, as is its handling of motion. We love the OneConnect box, too: the…

01 MAD MAX: FURY ROAD We know this is considered a classic test of an Atmos system because they play it at every single, god-damned Atmosrelated launch event we ever go to. Still! After four bloody years! 02 ABBEY ROAD You’ll have to shell out for the 2019, 50th anniversary special edition of course. However, Giles Martin’s Atmos remastering of arguably The Beatles’ finest LP is worth it. 03 3-D THE CATALOGUE Alternatively, Kraftwerk’s stunning live Blu-ray set also features mesmerising Atmos surround mixes of everything from Autobahn to Tour de France. You can also watch the visuals in 3D, if your TV is old. 04 BLADE RUNNER 2049 Nobody could deny that this sequel has its longueurs, but with the sound effects and techno soundtrack pumping full force at…

WHAT IS IT? The 5G version of Samsung’s 2019 flagship phone gives you a lot of phone in return for a lot of your money – you’ve got a huge 6.7-inch screen here (at an impressive 1440x3040 resolution), Samsung’s Exynos 9820 processor, and a quad-lens 16MP+12MP+12MP+time-of-flight sensor camera around the back that’s going to get you winning photos every time (photos which you can very quickly upload to social media, thanks to the magic of 5G). The front-facing camera is housed in a little notch in the corner of the screen, while the fingerprint sensor is embedded under the display. With or without the 5G, this is one of the most premium phones of 2019, and the next-gen network capabilities are just the icing on the cake. WHY CHOOSE IT?…

T3’S BUYING TIPS • £10 up front then £59 a month over 24 months on EE (unlimited data) WHAT IS IT? Oppo might not have the high profile of a Huawei or a OnePlus but the Chinese company certainly knows what it’s doing when it comes to making phones – and the Oppo Reno 5G is its first attempt at manufacturing a handset that is able to connect to next-generation networks. The Oppo Reno that this device is based on is an excellent smartphone, and a lot of the high-end specs and polish get carried over: the Oppo Reno 5G offers a 6.6-inch, 1080x2340 pixel resolution display, a speedy Snapdragon 855 processor, and plenty more besides. The selfie camera is hidden away inside a rather unusual pop-up unit that we…

WHAT IS IT? While the likes of Samsung, Apple and Google have been hogging a lot of the smartphone limelight in recent years, LG has quietly got on with the job of making perfectly good handsets that aren’t going to require you to empty the entirety of your savings account to afford them. Case in point: the LG V50 ThinQ 5G, which comes stacked with power, while offering some eye-catching looks as well. This was one of the first phones to be announced with 5G support, and for your cash you also get a 6.4-inch, 1440x3120 pixel resolution screen, a Snapdragon 855 processor, and a triple-lens 16MP+12MP+12MP rear camera. WHY CHOOSE IT? The LG V50 ThinQ doesn’t have much in the way of features that really set it apart from…

£399, sonos.com Most portable water-resistant, rugged wireless speakers are lightweight, cost less than £150 and are designed for pop party super-fun time. The Sonos Move is £399, weighs a hefty three kilos, and is as happy playing classical or prog as it is playing pop hits. It’s everything you’d expect from Sonos, but it ventures outdoors too. The Move sits on a barely noticeable charging pad, and you can also charge it via USB-C. The speaker manages 10 hours of playback per charge, with a power-saving mode keeping it alive for five days if you don’t use it. The Move is set up via (and runs on) the same app as any other Sonos speaker, and can access the same streaming services as any Sonos speaker. The Move supports AirPlay…

£379 gopro.com The GoPro Hero 8 Black is the most feature-laden action cam we’ve tested. It produces incredible videos, even from presets, and the HyperSmooth 2.0 image stabilisation – available for all video modes and resolutions – is beyond impressive. At first glance, the Hero 8 Black looks pretty similar to its predecessor, but its body is actually lighter, has cleaner lines and a lens that’s not quite as prominent, despite the camera being marginally larger in size than the Hero 7 Black. Though unavailable to test at the time of writing, there’s a new system of accessories, called Mods, designed for use with the Hero 8 Black. There’s a flip-up screen (Display Mod, £79), a shotgun mic (Media Mod, £79) and a 200-lumen light (Light Mod, £49), all available…

I want a new telly. A bigger one, really. I can’t actually fit one – my current TV already takes up the entirety of the physical space available – but that doesn’t really change anything. There’s just so much juicy change going on in the world of TVs right now that it’s unavoidable to feel the pull towards something new. LCD TVs are getting better and better to compete with OLED, OLED TVs are coming down in price, and then there’s 8K, taunting us all with its 33-million-pixel splendour. If you’re also tempted by a TV upgrade and actually have the space, we’ve got the best buys for everyone on p44. We haven’t forgotten sound, either - there are Dolby Atmos delights in that feature, and we’ve looked at the…

JAEGER-LECOULTRE POLARIS DATE Drawing inspiration from the 1970 Polaris II, the Polaris Date features a new hand-lacquered, blue double-gradient dial with sunrayed, grained and opaline finish. £6,950, jaeger-lecoultre.com G-SHOCK MUDMASTER GGB100-1A9 The new mud-resistant, app-enabled G-Shock is designed to withstand tough environments. There are also sensors to measure altitude, temperature and pace (there’s a steps count too). £325, g-shock.co.uk GRAND SEIKO GT-R LIMITED EDITION With a stunning blue ceramic case housing the innovative Spring Drive chronograph calibre, the Grand Seiko GT-R Limited Edition celebrates the 50th anniversary of the legendary Nissan GT-R. ¤21,600 (approx £19,244), grand-seiko.com CERTINA DS ACTION DIVER TITANIUM A true diver’s watch that’s waterproof (300m) and housing the robust Powermatic movement. Certina’s newcomer is crafted from lightweight titanium, so it won’t weigh your wrist down. £830, certina.com…

NEOM WELLBEING POD This wellness collection contains Neom’s stylish electronic oil diffuser, plus bottles of essential oil blends created to help you unwind. £130, neomorganics.com NANOLEAF MINI KIT Coloured lights are a mood booster. Use this pack of four smart light panels to create a customisable light display, choosing yellow and orange hues to promote happiness. £89, nanoleaf.me LUMIE BRAZIL Light therapy helps alleviate the symptoms of Seasonal Affective Disorder, delivering the equivalent of bright summer sunshine. Use it for 45 minutes each morning. £149, lumie.com…

1 SONOS ONE SL The Sonos Beam fires out three front channels of audio (left, right and centre). If you want to add rear left and right to turn it into surround sound, grab two of these – they’ll wirelessly connect to the Beam to sync up sound and give you the full experience. The Sonos One SL is basically a cheaper Sonos One, but without any voice assistant features – which is fine, since the Beam includes these. £179, sonos.com 2 SONOS SPEAKER STANDS To get the right height and spatial positioning for your new Sonos One SL rear units, grab these official stands. £199 (pair), sonos.com 3 IKEA X SONOS SYMFONISK If you want to be more subtle than just sticking two speakers in the back of the…

T3’S BUYING TIPS • £30 up front then £67.09 a month over 24 months with O2 (unlimited data) • £29 up front then £63 a month over 24 months with Vodafone (unlimited data) WHAT IS IT? If you’ve not heard of Xiaomi before, it’s one of the big Chinese phone makers now making in-roads into Europe and the US – file it alongside the likes of Huawei and OnePlus, which you might be more familiar with. It’s important to emphasise that Xiaomi isn’t in the business of cut-price, corner-cutting cheap phones: it makes some quality handsets that can hold their own against the Samsung and Apple handsets out there. The Mi Mix 5G comes with a 6.39-inch, 1080x2340 OLED display, the current top-end Snapdragon 855 processor, and a dual-lens 12MP+12MP…

WHAT IS IT? This is a real powerhouse of a phone from Huawei, launched before the US trade ban came into force, and therefore fully stocked with the Google Play Store and all of the Google apps you’re going to need. It doesn’t have quite the latest and greatest specs – it uses last year’s Kirin 980 processor rather than this year’s Kirin 990 model, for example – but it will still give you plenty of oomph for years to come. The screen is a stupendously large 7.2-inch, 1080x2244 pixel OLED affair, and around the back the handset comes with a triple-lens 40MP+20MP+8MP camera that keeps up Huawei’s reputation for developing some of the best phone cameras in the business. In terms of its design, it uses a teardrop notch…

T3’S BUYING TIPS • £30 up front then £67.50 a month over 24 months with O2 (unlimited data) • £9 up front then £55 a month over 24 months with Vodafone (unlimited data) WHAT IS IT? Samsung again with the 5G phones! This time we’ve got a more mid-range handset, reflecting the sheer number of phones that Samsung actually puts out these days. At the time of writing, Samsung hadn’t confirmed the processor, but expect something high end. It comes with a 6.7-inch display that offers a resolution of 1080x2400 pixels. You also get a triple-lens 48MP+8MP+5MP camera on the rear of the phone. It’s in areas like the camera, as well as the overall fit and finish of the handset, that you can spot the difference between this and…

From £1,049 apple.com/uk The new top-end iPhone doesn’t look drastically different from last year’s, cameras aside. And that’s because it isn’t drastically different from last year’s, cameras aside. Yet lots of small changes all over mean that this is a phenomenal phone… which it had better be, given that it starts at a whopping £1,049 for the 5.8-inch model or £1,140 for the 6.5-inch ‘Max’ model. The stainless steel on the sides and glass across the back are essentially identical to the iPhone XS. The glass has been upgraded – Apple says it’s the toughest ever on a smartphone – and the phone comes in a new colour called Midnight Green. The iPhone 11 Pro and Pro Max have the same screen density (over 400ppi) but at different resolutions, so…

£199 nintendo.co.uk The Switch Lite is an assured new step on the dedicated portable console path that Nintendo has dominated for decades. But it’s emphatically not a successor to the original Nintendo Switch. The Switch Lite is smaller (91.1x208x13.9mm compared to 102x239x13.9mm), and thanks to rounder case edges and a new matte finish, it’s a tad more comfortable to hold. It’s also lighter, at 275g compared to the original Switch’s 297g. The Switch Lite’s screen is 5.5 inches compared to the Switch’s 6.2, but it retains the same 720p resolution, so it actually looks a little sharper. The Switch Lite’s microSD card slot is located on the bottom of the case under the right thumbstick, behind a pull-away tab. There’s no kickstand, no rumble, and no ambient light sensor either.…