GADGET GURU’S MAGIC BOX

This month, the time came, once again, for Guru and his friends to engage in the traditional esport of inventing new and innovative swears while playing the original Quake in the same room. This meant, naturally, GaGu investing in some new hardware to give him the edge: in this case, it was the Razer Huntsman keyboard ($178), which employs optical switches to ensure maximum responsiveness. Not only that, but it sounds absolutely amazing, with a delicate click, a satisfying bottoming-out thwock, and enough typing volume to drown out the rude names Guru’s rocketvictims came up with for him.

Time to talk TicWatch Pro, as Guru previously promised. It’s been on the wrist for a while now and, as an upgrade from the Pebble, Guru couldn’t be any more pleased with his purchase. The health tracking seems dot on, and GaGu was even motivated to go for a run or two, using the heart-rate monitor (which worryingly told him his heart was thumping in the ‘dangerous’ range), integrated GPS tracking and the Wear Casts podcast app to cater for everything without a phone in his pocket. Bad points, though: things have, at times, gotten slightly sluggish, with little of the responsiveness you’d find on the Apple Watch. A restart usually fixes it, but Guru was expecting a little better. Also, Guru was unaware that the generic Android Wear version of Spotify is little more than a remote control, with no offline storage on the watch, and there really ought to be more settings available for screen-on time. GaGu had to resort to the (excellent, but paid-for) StayLit Wear app to add a backlight timer. Overall, though, one and a half thumbs up.