HOTWARE
01 Smart Boy
$89.99 • MightyApe www.mightyape.com.au Connect to an Android phone (preferably a Samsung S8), plug in a cartridge, and relive the gaming glory of the ‘90s, all thanks to Hyperkin. POWERED UP: Uses real GameBoy and GameBoy Colour cartridges, displaying the output on your phone, but with chunky GameBoy casing, D-Pad, and buttons. The unit is powered from the phone’s battery as well which saves you carrying more weight than you have to for your retro gaming fix. PLAYED OUT: One of those things that’s probably cooler in concept than reality, unless you happen to have a bunch of cartridges lying around, nothing to play them on, and a burning desire to do so.
Datorbox 02
$3200 • Love Hulten www.lovehulten.com You have to love Love Hulten: his work is always exquisite, and this compact gaming system is no exception. POWERED UP: Beautiful retro design, handmade in Sweden, NVIDIA 1060 GPU, a choice of i5 or i7 CPU, and 128 or 256GB SSD (depending on whether you go standard or deluxe edition)+ 1TBHDD, and custom colour finish options. PLAYED OUT: Limited to 50 pieces and priced accordingly.
03 Z VR Backpack
$4200 • HP www.hp.com Designed by HP for VR situations where cables are a hindrance (i.e. all of them) this portable PC is ready to move, and can be docked to become a workstation. POWERED UP: Up to 32GB RAM, Core i7 vPro CPU, NVIDIA Quadro P5200. PLAYED OUT: I’ve heard of WEARABLE COMPUTING but this is ridiculous! (audience laughter). Well that’s one way to HARNESS computational power!! (hysterical audience laughter). What? Intel Inside… OUTSIDE?!? (audience now in tears). Now I can take a PCI BUS on THE BUS!!!!! (editor now in tears) (You’re fired, Terry - Ed.)
04 Token Smart Ring
$350 • Token tokenize.com Three keys for those with no smarthome yet, seven credit cards for the indebted with limits blown, nine passwords mortal men are doomed to forget, one ring for the huge geek on their throne. POWERED UP: Replace access cards, credit cards, transit cards, car keys, house keys, computer passwords – store them all in one Bluetooth/ NFC device, with fingerprint security to activate, and sensors to detect removal. PLAYED OUT: “One ring to access everything”. You can just FEEL how mad Token is about being told by its lawyers that they couldn’t use “one ring to rule them all”. Currently sold out.
05 Nix Mini Colour Sensor
$120 • Nix nixmini.com Do you do a lot of colour matching? Okay, well how about some colour matching? Look work with us here: consider you were in a situation where you had to get some paint to match your wall or your couch or something. Great! This will help! (You people are a lot of work sometimes.) POWERED UP: Instant match to over 10,000 paints, as well as RGB, HTML, CMYK and LAB colours. Is about the size of a golf ball, so extremely portable. Over 5000 scans per battery charge! PLAYED OUT: Probably excellent if you are a professional painter, and a questionable use of money otherwise.