GADGET GURU’S MAGIC BOX

Here’s a thing: have you noticed that the US-only Wyze Cam ($20, pictured) and UK-centric Neos Smartcam (£25) look identical? They aren’t. Yes, they use the same core hardware, but there are big differences in their firmware and big differences in their apps; it turns out both are simply rebadged and reprogrammed versions of the Xiaomi Xiaofang 1S (around £18). What is worse, you can’t flash, say, Wyze firmware onto a Neos cam, because it’s tied to the MAC address of the hardware.

That’s not to say that you can’t monkey with the firmware at all. There’s a custom firmware available (search Dafang Hacks) that can add features to (and get rid of a few annoyances of) both the original and the rebadged cameras – even adding some rudimentary HomeKit support – but it’s very much an at your own risk situation. Given the pocket money price of these cams, though, it might be worth an experiment or two.

While GaGu will maintain that Android tablets are one of the biggest disappointments of the tech market until he is blue in the face, the junior members of the Guru household are doing their best to change his mind. Both invested their Christmas and birthday money in the 2019 version of the surprisingly cheap Amazon Fire HD 10 (£109-£149 depending on spec and included ads). Guru is alarmed at how capable it is both at running apps and at shutting the pair of them up and, while it’s not what you’d call a proper Android tablet out of the box, installing Google’s core apps is a five minute exercise. A massive bargain – miles from an iPad, certainly, but a fraction of the price.