PASTIMES & PASSIONS

1

ASTROHAUS FREEWRITE TRAVELER

The Traveler promises to be the ultimate distraction-free writing environment: all it lets you do is write. The e-ink screen means you can go four weeks between charges, the scissor keyboard is comfortable for even long sessions and at 1.6lb it’s lighter than a typical laptop. $429, getfreewrite.com 2

NIKON D850 With 45.7 megapixels, the equivalent ISO range of 32 to 102,400, full-frame 4K video recording and fast data transfer, the Nikon D850 is a superb camera for serious photography. Everything about the Nikon is pretty much perfect, apart from availability: many retailers have had limited stock in recent months.

£2,699, nikon.co.uk 3 LOGITECH BRIO STREAM

Fancy being a streaming celebrity? The Brio Stream is as essential as a ring light. It streams up to 4K quality or 60fps 1080p with HDR and automatic lighting adjustment, and you can adjust the field of view from 65 to 90 degrees and blur, remove or replace the background too. It’s a cracking piece of kit.

£219, logitech.com 4 ROLAND AE-30 AEROPHONE PRO This sci-fi sax looks more like a drone than a saxophone, and it’s an extraordinary musical instrument that recreates not just a sax but trumpets, flutes, synthesisers and even brass and string sections. An inspiring combination of traditional musicianship and cuttingedge technology.

£1,319, roland.com 5 POWERVISION POWEREGG X WIZARD EDITION The Wizard Edition of this extraordinary 60fps 4K camera drone comes with lots of accessories including landing gear that enables you to land your drone on water. The drone itself is very smart, with features including face recognition and gesture control; it can also record and sync audio.

€1,149, powervision.me

6

FENDER ACOUSTASONIC STRATOCASTER

Fender’s Acoustasonic guitars use clever audio tech to deliver the best of both worlds: a Fender acoustic and a Fender electric in a single guitar. This brand new model delivers warm, natural tone as well as some interesting blends of acoustic and electric. £1,879, fender.com

7

iPAD PRO 12.9 + APPLE PENCIL (2ND GEN)

An astonishingly powerful tablet, and with the secondgeneration Apple Pencil it becomes a great electronic easel for artists, illustrators and designers. It can run a tabletoptimised version of Adobe’s Creative Cloud as well as excellent pro-level apps. £769 + £119, apple.com

8

RØDECASTER PRO

The RØDECaster Pro is a powerful and user-friendly all-in-one podcasting studio. It enables you to record up to four people simultaneously thanks to its quadruple microphone inputs and headphone outputs, and you can also record remote guests via your phone with automatic echo cancellation. £529, rode.com

9

ROCKETBOOK FUSION

We’re huge fans of paper notebooks but even the thickest ones get full eventually. Not the Fusion: its reusable pages enable you to scribble and sketch and then upload the page to your preferred cloud service as an image or PDF. You can then wipe the page clean and start anew. £39, getrocketbook.co.uk