Gadget Guru’s magic box

GaGu recently went on an actual holiday – the definition of ‘actual’ here being ‘soul-wrenchingly devoid of good Wi-Fi or mobile signal’ – which was a truly horrible experience he does not wish to repeat in a hurry. Particularly because he returned home to find his basement boudoir infested with mould. Turns out ventilation is important, and GaGu’s still-persistent habit of breathing (and Mrs Guru’s hairdrying routines) had left the area somewhat moist, with those weird no-brand desiccant bags from Amazon unable to keep up. And so, after already splurging a positively painful amount of money on Gurus Jr and II in the wild, and lacking the relevant press contacts or credentials to influencer his way into any kind of review hardware, he was forced to drop a further a few hundred quid into a dehumidifier. The VonHaus 20L Dehumidifier is not sexy. It’s a white box, which GaGu was forced to customise with some googly eyes. But that thing can sure quietly suck the water out of the air, leaving Guru’s room positively crispy and doubling up as a rather effective way to help indoor-hung laundry get properly dry.

Back in the world of good internet and proper computers, Guru finds his somewhere-on-the-spectrum mind looping a new obsession with the idea of picking up an Android TV box in order to cram it with emulators. The Nvidia Shield TV is an obvious choice, though there are cheaper possibilities elsewhere. Does Guru buy, for example, an Intel NUC? Should he hit up eBay for an ex-office PC and brute-force old games onto that with a pre-built OS like Batocera? Is your favourite uncle possibly overthinking things a bit too much? Answers on a postcard.