GADGET GURU’S MAGIC BOX

A number of things of varying interestingness have crossed Guru’s desk this month. First, sent completely unsolicited from the lovely folks at Innr, the FL 120 C Smart Light Flex 2M Colour. It is a Hue-compatible LED light strip which, like every other Innr thing GaGu has tested, does a really good job. The colour range is decent, the hardware itself looks well built as far as LED strips go, and Guru assumes it’s slightly more cheap than the equivalent product from Philips. He says ‘assumes’ because Guru cannot actually find this for sale in the UK. Perhaps that’s coming soon. Second, the really rather cool Nighthawk XR500 router from the guys at Netgear. Outwardly it almost manages to sidestep the designers’ predilections for creating unsavoury plinths which look like they’re designed for ritual sacrifice, but not quite.

There’s still a definite gamer flavour to it, which is pretty appropriate because on the inside this thing has some steroid-infused muscle. It’s bursting with QoS and Geofencing and heavyweight network-tweaking tools, it’s packed with processing power, and its Wi-Fi range, next to GaGu’s trusty Orbi mesh network, is remarkable.

Finally a thing which has not crossed Guru’s desk, but he very much wishes it would if it actually exists, is the rumoured upgrade to the Oculus Quest. His own fairlynew Quest has seen a lot of use; the follow up looks set to have more RAM, a juiced-up Snapdragon chipset, a reduction in weight and size, and even more fluid controllers. Do note that Guru is basing this preview entirely on lazy internet guesswork.