GADGETS
High res
V
R technology has come a long way in a fairly short time. The Varjo Aero is arguably the next big step in the technology. Whilst the horizontal field of view (115°) is somewhat underwhelming, the use of aspherical lenses instead of the standard fresnel lens coupled with the enormously high resolution (1920 x 1920px per eye at the focal point and 2880 x 2720 per eye peripheral) means the problems of god rays, screen door and mura are gone. If you use VR for simulations with lots of dials and buttons to read, this is the solution for you: the detail and clarity is basically the same as looking at a monitor. There are no base stations & controllers included. Varjo Aero aero.varjo.com $2,000 (+taxes) (VR headset only)
Phone downtime
M
ore and more people are trying to cut down on their smartphone addiction nowadays: even we insist on collecting everyone’s phones in a single bag at family dinners. The Light Phone II is a fairly good compromise between a dumb phone and the smartphone. You can call people, SMS and group message them, you can tether it to get the internet on another device, you can listen to music and podcasts, and it has a GPS map/ directions system. Getting to the point, though: the phone has no social media, email or internet browsing and no apps. The only major downside is that text typing is restricted to English characters, so Cyrillic and CJK is not an option, although you can view incoming messages in several languages/ characters.
Light phone II www.thelightphone.com $300
Super Mac
A
pple’s M1 Chip has come of age, with its appearance in a mid-to-high-end offering firmly aimed at professionals, called the Mac Studio. Looking like a twostorey MacMini, the Studio comes in two flavours, the M1 Max and the M1 Ultra, the M1 Ultra essentially being two M1 Max chips on a single board, doubling the CPUs, GPUs and RAM. The minimum specs are a 10-core CPU, a 24-core GPU, a 16-core neural engine, 32GB RAM and 512GB SSD; the maximum is a 20-core CPU, 64-core GPU and 32-core Neural Engine, with 128GB RAM and 8TB SSD. You’ll likely want a Studio Display to pair it with which goes for $1,600-$2,300 depending on options.
Mac Studio www.apple.com $2,000–$8,000
ISSUE ONE 2022
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