Samsung Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra - King of Tablets Still Reigns

I've never made any secret of the fact I don't fully understand the Android tablet market.

But then, I've always had a laptop, a phone and a TV.

What's the connection?

Well, as far as I'm concerned, my ideal tablet would be a combination of all those things. A kind of all-devices-in-one concept that offers all the portability of a handset but all the productivity of a PC.

It seems to me, the main limitation of of tablets up to this point is generally, their manufacturers have treated them more like giant phones than stripped-down laptops. By that, I mean their software and chip architecture has tended to be based on smartphone-style user interfaces as opposed to more powerful, computer-like operating systems.

But lately, the paradigm has shifted. To the point we're even seeing computers running on chips from manufacturers more traditionally associated with making phones work.

So by that logic, the world's best Android tablet might now be one of the most useful gadgets to have in your hand.

Not that it's super easy to hold the Samsung Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra in one hand. This thing is massive. Its 14.6-inch AMOLED 2X display has got to be about as big as you can go with this form-factor - and yet the whole thing is a mere 5.1mm thin.

Despite that, this feels like a sturdy, strong, durable machine. There's no flex, even when you do hold it by just one edge.

That screen is sublime, of course. There's a reason why other brands use Samsung panels on their devices too, Samsung is very good at this and it's been doing it a long time. If you're gaming with the Tab S12 Ultra - and why wouldn't you? - you're dealing with a 120Hz refresh rate and all the popping colours and crystal clarity we've come to know, love and yes, even expect.

Of course, the one drawback of a nice, shiny AMOLED display like this is it is so shiny - reflection can be an issue in bright environments or if you have a window or other light source behind you. I note Samsung sells an anti-reflecting screen protector to help with this, but I'd like to see the same anti-glare technology used on recent Samsung TVs applied to the next Tab Ultra please.

The wonderful screen also makes for a marvelous streaming device - especially when you take into account the supreme connectivity of Wi-Fi 7 - or even 5G with a SIM installed. Team that up with the quad-speaker sound system and you'll be amazed how authentic the home theatre experience is from such a portable device.

As I type this, I'm listening to a "Lossless" stream of soprano sax guru, Wayne Shorter, live in concert. It's a masterful example of recording production, reproduced on the Tab S12 Ultra's Spatial Audio speaker array precisely - almost as though the four built-in speakers are spaced out on each corner of my desk. Really quite remarkable for a tablet.

And yes, you read that correctly; I'm typing this on the Tab S12 Ultra itself, because that's how far the Galaxy Tab has come. Not only can I pair a mouse, keyboard, game controller or anything else via Bluetooth 6.0, I can instantly enter DeX mode with a click, converting the phone-like layout of the home screen to a more desktop-ish arrangement that allows me to open multiple apps in multiple windows, moving them arround and resizing them as I wish.

The photos and video you see in this review have been uploaded not from local storage on the tablet, but from a cloud directory - in just the same way I would with a "real" computer. We've broken a real barrier here; no longer am I "doing the best I can" then jumping onto my desktop machine to finish the more complicated bits. In the past, formatting posts like these would have been far too hit and miss to confidently achieve want I wanted from an Android gadget. But those gadgets weren't this gadget.

At its heart, the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 - a truly flagship, 3nm CPU that was built to aggregate the best AI has to offer into one place. You'll see me perform a very rough demonstration of some of the photo editing tricks on hand in the video below, but it goes a lot deeper than that.

Even compared to last year's Tab S11 Ultra, this chip is significantly faster in every way - especially when it comes to the neural processing AI features rely upon - there's been an incredible 61% increase in speed.

The camera setup is far from flagship quality, however. A 13MP main rear shooter is teamed with a lowly 8MP ultra-wide. Still, that's better than no ultra-wide - which is where most other tablets sit.

Conversely, the 12MP selfie cam is very capable - as is the mic quality. See if you can spot where I swap from my desk-mounted external mic to the built-in mic of the Tab S12 Ultra in the video below. I bet you can't.

Samsung also deserves credit for including the S Pen stylus in the box. Again, Samsung has been doing the S Pen for a long time, so you know this is a fine tool for all you note-takers, sketchers and colour-inners out there. Seriously though, if you're looking to this tablet as a graphic artist, an animator or a 3D image creator - those are exactly the kind of thing this thing was born for.

It's all too easy to compare the performance of a tablet to that of other types of devices - phones, TVs, laptops etc. - and that's a bit unfair given a tablet isn't any of those things. Except this one.

That's why if you're going to go there, go all the way and make the investment in a device that can actually hold its own against many other specialist gadgets. Can you watch TV on it? Yep. Looks amazing. Sounds pretty good too. Take notes? Draw? Highlight? Of course, all you need is an S Pen, one of the finest styluses you can buy - that you don't have to buy, because it's included in the box.

How does the Tab S12 Ultra stack up as gaming machine? We've established the great display performance, and the impressive speaker array. Add the MediaTek Dimensity 9500 chip and this is effectively a mobile gaming console.

Then we come to perhaps the most unfair comparison of all; can you use the Tab S12 Ultra as a laptop? Well, I paired a mouse and a keyboard with it, plonked it in a stand and well... I think the video below says the rest.

You'll certainly pay a premium for this tablet, but when it excels at being at least four different devices in one, it has to be one of the most premium choices on the market.

Click here for more information on the Samsung Galaxy Tab S12 Ultra.

EZVIZ HB90 Dual 3K Kit - Double the Video for Less

I've made my feelings about home security cameras pretty clear in the past; it's all very well having a camera with all the latest features but if most of them are hidden behind a premium subscription, you could end up paying more than you budgeted for.

At the very least, I don't think it's too much to ask for your camera - the one you paid good money for - to be able to store what it records somewhere you can easily access. Surely that should be the minimum expectation from any home security camera and yet many make you pay a monthly fee to do just that.

So it's hardly surprising other common features like pre-roll footage and package, person or vehicle detection are often subscription-only too.

I hate it.

In fact, I hate it so much, I've gone so far to suggest I'd pay more for a camera up front in order to get some of that stuff for free.

Before we even get into what the EZVIZ HB90 does and doesn't do with or without a subscription, we need to cover off some pretty cool things about this camera I haven't seen before.

Firstly, this isn't one camera, it's two. The top, wide-angle lens offers a 96° horizontal view, with the ability to tilt at 10° and pan through 220°. Meanwhile, the lower cam tilts up and down through 90° and can basically rotate all the way around, panning through 324°.

So to be clear, both cameras can pan and tilt completely independently from each other. That gives you the ability to monitor two areas at once. For example, if you mount the HB90 at the corner of your house, you could potentially set one to point down the side of the property while the other keeps an eye on what's happening out front.

Alternatively, there's another way to use them; in concert. And this is so clever, it's exactly what I'm doing at my place.

Once you've set up the HB90 using the EZVIZ app, you can set each camera to monitor specific zones by default, then, when the wide angle lens spots a vehicle or a person, the other camera swings into action - literally - utilising its superior manoeuvrability to track the moving subject, resulting in a far more useful video of the event.

The other crucial part of the HB90 equation is the 8W solar panel, included in the kit.

This is a monocrystalline solar cell - if you haven't come across one before, they don't have a smooth, glassy finish as you might imagine a solar panel to have, which is good for you as that kind of surface can quickly become dirty, clouded and less effective. Instead, the HB90's panel (approx. 27cm x 19cm)  has a stippled, matte surface that I've found to be much harder wearing out in the weather.

There's a very versatile mounting arm included in the box and the 3-metre USB-C cable is long enough to give you a fair amount of flexibility when it comes to mounting both your camera and the panel.

The mounting bracket for the camera itself is simple, yet effective, with a choice of screw holes so you have the option to wall mount, ceiling mount, or even post/pole mount. Remember, because it runs on solar, you're not restricted by access to a power point or somewhere you can easily reach, to regularly swap out batteries. (Think up a tree, or perhaps high, under the eaves of the front wall of your house)

As long as it's within Wi-Fi range, there's essentially nowhere you can't put it.

What worked out well for me is the possie I selected out front is under a small overhang that meant I could just lie the solar panel on the roof, directly above the camera, pretty much concealing the power cable so everything stays nice and tidy.

There are plenty of screws etc in the box for all the mounts, with the HB90 unit sliding securely into place.

There's also a 16GB microSD card included in the kit, which is significant because this goes to the first thing I hate about subscription-based cameras; paying for storage. You still can - EZVIZ offers a range of CloudPlay storage plans from as little as NZ$89.99 a year. And to be fair, keeping your footage in the cloud is the most secure option.

However, not only am I cheap, I'm also reasonably confident the majority of would-be, opportunistic porch-pirates who might be considering targeting my front doorstep are unlikely to be resourceful enough to consider tampering with the camera itself, in order to snatch the microSD card any incriminating video is being saved to. That's assuming the sight of the camera itself isn't enough of a deterrent to keep them away in the first place. In keeping with that idea, you can even set the HB90 to flash red/blue lights and sound a loud siren if the bad guys get too close.

The included card is a long-life model with super fast read/write speed - making it ideal for use in cameras like these. Just a wee note; I opted to install a larger card so I could store more video and I found it quite finicky formatting it using the EZVIZ app. It wasn't until I turned the camera off and back on completely that it was prepared to recognise my bigger microSD as a correctly formatted device.

However, once I'd dispatched with that small hurdle, the rest of the setup proved pretty straightforward. The EZVIZ app gives you access to a lot of settings and customisations - perhaps a few too many. Given you're effectively initialising two cameras at once, it's easy to get bogged down in one menu when the the setting you're trying to change is somewhere else. I wonder if the interface could be streamlined and simplified a little.

I've found setting up the default detection zones to be particularly fiddly. As the camera (or cameras, plural) are facing out from the front of my house, they take in the street and two footpaths as well. I'd rather not be notified every time someone passes by - either on foot or in a car - but I still need to set up zones that will capture any vehicles or people coming onto my property as soon as possible.

Luckily, you can set the HB90 to Always-On Video mode, a low frame-rate, constant recording state that means you get a few seconds of lower-quality pre-roll footage before the detected event recording kicks in. Yet again, this is exactly the kind of feature you usually have to pay extra for. But not with EZVIZ.

Another such feature is Human and Vehicle detection. The HB90 can tell the difference and will notify you accordingly, without charging you more to make the distinction. There's also a "Beta" feature called Familiar Faces. The idea here is the app will notify you if someone you know has arrived at the house. Of course, you need to train the camera to do this using pictures of the the people who are likely to turn up, which I have. And it doesn't work. Not yet, anyway. Maybe it's just more Beta than I thought and it will improve in a future update.

As you would expect, picture quality is excellent and I'll demonstrate just that in the video below. If both cameras are pointed in the same direction, you'll unlock 4x zoom functionality - which should be more than enough to recognise faces or read number plates, even from quite a distance. And the HB90 works just as well at night - the two spotlights help provide full-colour after-dark footage, with another setting called Balanced Image Exposure ensuring you won't miss any important details, even in more shady areas.

Ultimately, what we have here is two cameras in one, that never need charging, that can physically track people who enter your property, even recording their movements before they're detected. And that footage will be stored locally, all requiring no further payment than the initial cost of the camera. A lot to love and none of my pet hates.

     

Click here for more information and pricing on the EZVIZ HB90 Dual 3K Kit.

Life360 Pet GPS - Keeping Track of Four-Legged Family Members

I am a very lucky dog owner.

My little guy doesn't really dig and he's never really shown any inclination to try and escape our property.

Conversely, we have a friend whose cavoodle has made it her life's mission to break out and head for the hills... or the park... or the supermarket... or just anywhere, really.

So I've become pretty complacent, confident that 5 year-old Jerry will be waiting at the top of the stairs for me every day when I get home from work, manically hopping from foot to foot, desperate for his ritual behind-the-ear scritches and belly rubs.

But what if one day Jerry wasn't there? What if he'd been led astray by that bad influence cavoodle, decided the grass really did look greener on the other side of the fence and took off check it out first hand?

Nightmare.

Luckily, there's now literally nowhere in the world he can go where I can't find him.

It's thanks to the Life360 Pet GPS - a compact tracker that fits securely onto any furry friend's collar.

I'm pretty late onto the Life360 bandwagon, although I know people who rely on it religiously, to keep tabs on other family members - kids, partners, parents - so they always have peace of mind, secure in the knowledge their loved ones are where they're supposed to be - or at least on their way to where they're supposed to be.

What I'd missed completely though, was Life360's 2021 acquisition of Tile, one of the world's most trusted names in bluetooth tracking devices.

Now the Tile range includes not only car key fobs and stick-on trackers, but also super-slim credit-card-shaped trackers for your wallet too.

All these items can easily be added to the Life360 app on your phone, and although the trackers are not GPS capable themselves, by connecting to nearby phones via bluetooth, the location is established using those phones' GPS capabilities instead.

Some Tile trackers have built-in, non-replaceable batteries that last for a very long time - up to three years, in fact. Others have batteries that CAN be swapped out, although this results in a slightly larger form-factor - it's one of the reasons the Tile Pro is a lot longer than the basic Tile for example.

The Pet GPS is a different beast. So to speak.

As the name indicates, this tracker has its own GPS chip, so it's able to provide real time location information in even the most remote areas - regardless of any other phones being nearby. And unlike Life360's other Tile trackers, the Pet GPS is rechargeable. This is essential, because providing real-time location information via satellite takes a lot more power than a low-energy bluetooth connection - although the Pet GPS has that too, which means even once the rechargeable cell goes flat (you'll get around 14 days on a full charge) the device itself can still be located via the Tile network for another 6 months, thanks to Reserve Mode.

To get full functionality from your Pet GPS, you will need a Silver Life360 membership plan. The good news is, a year's worth of Silver Life360 is included with your purchase. Now that's what I call a trial period.

I'm not usually a fan of compulsory subscriptions to make a device work, but a 12-month Silver sub is quite generous and at least you'll know for sure if it's worth another $89.99 for the following year.

There are Gold and Platinum subscriptions too and I was blown away to discover the extra features you're entitled to at those higher levels. For example, a Gold subscription means you can use a Pet GPS tracker on up to five different animals and you even get ID Theft Protection on the email account associated with your membership.

At both Gold and Platinum levels, you're entitled to roadside assistance - including towing - and even hundreds of dollars towards a new phone if yours is stolen.

And if you go Platinum, you can call for medical advice over the phone and even travel assistance when things go wrong on holiday!

There's certainly a lot more to Life360 than just a tracker on your dog's collar.

Which brings us back to the device we're actually reviewing here. The Pet GPS comes in Black, Navy Blaze (blue and orange) or Pink Punch. There's a charging cable, collar mount and an Adventure Sleeve included in the box.

The design is simple, yet robust. The mount has a rubbery loop that hooks over your pet's collar to keep it firmly in place. The Pet GPS itself charges via a USB-C port on the back, then simply clips onto the collar mount or unclips just by squeezing both sides of the device.

The tracker seems pretty tough and it's water resistant, with an IP68 rating. The Adventure Sleeve provides even more protection, sliding over both the core unit and the mount - but I think only the most manic diggers, rollers and zoomers would require this extra level of protection.

Speaking of zooming, nothing is likely to crack a dog owner up more than watching that faithful best friend hit turbo and start running and jumping around like crazy for no apparent reason. That's why you can actually set the Life360 app to give you a "Zoomies Alert" - so you won't miss out, even if you're not around.

Obviously, that's not the only alert you can activate. You can be notified the moment your pet leaves your property - or arrives back. And because it's a live GPS signal, you can literally track your pet's movements on a map, and retrace them - even days later.

There's also a bright light on the front of the Pet GPS. For a safer night walk, you can turn this on with a single push of the pairing button at the top of the device. Or, if you've lost sight of your pet somewhere dark, you can trigger the light from the app to help retrieve them from under the deck or out of the middle of that woodpile.

Should the worst happen and your escape artist answers the call of the wild without you knowing, you can immediately send out an alert to the world's largest pet finder network and all the other Life360 users in your area will be notified your precious is on the lam and they'll see a picture so they'll know who to look out for.

And that doesn't just mean pets wearing the Pet GPS either. No sooner had I signed up for my Life360 subscription and filled out my profile than I received an urgent notification about a neighbour's missing budgie. I don't know if they found it but I know I certainly had my eyes peeled for the next few days.

It's this kind of community-powered, technology-assisted network that is now at my disposal, all through my dog's new Pet GPS and the Life360 app. I had no idea of the extent of what Life360 had to offer, nor the peace of mind I now have, knowing where Jerry is, every second of the day. You just can't buy that.

    

Click here for more information and pricing on the Life360 Pet GPS.

Philips Hue Essential A60 - Still Not Quite Smart Enough

This is going to be a review of two halves.

And it's mostly because I've painted myself into an IoT corner.

When I first started testing smart home devices, most of them were very locked into their respective "ecosystems."

Apple TV and Apple HomePods used Siri to control other devices designed specifically to be Apple-friendly, with companion apps tailor-made for iOS.

If you wanted to control an Echo speaker or a Ring doorbell, that was a job for Alexa.

Nest cameras and doorbells only talked to Google Assistant.

And don't get me started on Samsung and SmartThings.

But all that's over now, right? Thanks to protocols like Matter and Thread, these days every smart device now integrates seamlessly with every other one, regardless of what brand, what type and what kind of virtual assistant you're controlling them with. Right?

If only. 

To be fair to Philips, the Hue range of smart lighting products have always been a bit more platform-agnostic than most, so I was pretty confident the new Essential A60 E27 bulbs would slot into my twisted web of random IoT gadgets pretty seamlessly.

And to be fair to everyone else, between Matter, Thread, Zigbee, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi 7 and every other damn thing that makes these doodads work, I have started to see some slow-but-steady improvement when it comes to interoperability.

In fact, according the the Hue Essentials A60 web page, they now work with Alexa, Google Home, Apple Home, IFTTT, Matter, Samsung SmartThings, Sonos and something called Klikaanklikuit, which I've never even heard of but I'm certainly going to look up after I finish writing this review.

But at the very least, although they're pitched as being a bit more entry level than the more expensive Hue White and Color bulbs, I'd have thought setting them up with the native Hue app would be the best way to go.

The Hue app has evolved quite nicely over the years and has now incorporated the Hue Sync app which used to be required to control the HDMI Sync boxes I've reviewed previously. This means you can see all your Hues in one place, designating them to specific rooms or groups, creating automations and schedules or just manually controlling various effects and other features from your phone.

I was sent three Essential A60 bulbs - which is slightly strange given they seem to come in packs of either two or four - and as expected, I had no issues whatsoever setting up the first bulb, in my dining room where I already have a trio of White and Colour Hues installed.

However, the second bulb wouldn't complete its setup process, even after several re-tries. So I resorted to installing it via the Amazon Alexa app instead. After all, I was intending to control these lights using Alexa anyway. (I also talk to Google and Siri in my house but let's not get distracted... Yet.)

Then the third light proved even more stubborn. I tried multiple times with Hue. I tried with Alexa. I tried with Apple Home. But it wasn't until I tried with Google Home that I had any success.

At this point, I assumed all would be well. Everything talks to everything else now, remember? Because Google Assistant now knew I had a new light in the dining room, surely Alexa and Siri would too.

Apparently not. Grrrrrr.

To cut a long story slightly shorter, I eventually managed to link my recalcitrant bulbs to the Hue app by going into another room and screwing them into a bedside lamp instead. Why this made any difference, I have absolutely no idea.

All my Hue devices are paired with a Hue Bridge Pro, which although tucked away in my entertainment cabinet under my TV in the living room, has never had any issue talking to its companions wherever I've installed them around the house - even outside. So it's all a bit of a frustrating mystery.

The good news is, once I screwed all the bulbs back in to where I wanted them, they performed perfectly, as if nothing had ever happened - and they continue to, many days later.

There's a reasonably short list of fairly specialised missing features that make the new Essential bulbs more affordable - they don't have the exact colour-matching ability of their more premium stablemates, their peak brightness isn't quite as peak and they only dim down to 2% - as opposed to 0.2%. Why you need lights that dim to 0.2%, I'm not exactly sure. And as you'll see from my video below, I think you'd need a pretty discerning eye to be able to detect the difference between the different shades of different colours.

The important thing is, you can still set these to whatever colour and brightness you like and you can still control and automate them with all those different virtual assistants I mentioned earlier. The long list of preset colour scenes keeps getting longer in the Hue app and obviously you can create and save your own scenes too.

And excitingly, when Essential A60s are paired with the Bridge Pro like mine are, you can then activate Motion Aware. If you have a minimum of three Hue devices in the same space, Motion Aware basically turns them into motion sensors - so the lights can now turn themselves on when you walk in the room. Or, alternatively, you can use them to fire off other automations instead.

Unlike my initial setup struggles, calibrating Motion Aware using the Hue app was effortless and I now want my whole house to work that way.

So in a nutshell, the Essential A60 smart bulbs are pretty great. So great, I personally would struggle to choose the more expensive alternatives from this point on. Especially given my only major criticism of previous Hue products was always how expensive they are compared to competing devices.

I'm sure my setup ordeals were more due to my jumbled conglomeration of various IoT bits and pieces all connected via different apps to different hubs and controlled by different virtual assistants. One of these days I'm going to sit down and try and figure out why Alexa thinks I have two different devices called Dining Room Light 1 - and when you click on either of them the same bulb turns on or off.

Eventually, devices like these will make my life easier instead of more complicated, like they're supposed to. Today wasn't that day, but I have high hopes for tomorrow.

    

Click here for more information and pricing on the Philips Hue Essential A60.

JBL Live 780NC - Approaching Premium

As I've commented many times before, no other audio brand floods the market with as many different headphone and earbud options as JBL.

Not only does there always seem to be a model to suit most budgets, JBL often "out-choices" its competitors when it comes to colour and style alternatives too.

The problem with this approach is, they're all pretty damn good. That's not a problem for us as customers but for JBL, it must make it harder to sell its top-of-the-line products when the more mid-range offerings come so close to that level of performance.

The Live 780NC is one such example.

When comparing the bare-bone specs with the "more premium" JBL Tour One M3 - minus its physical added extras - it's quite a challenge to separate the two headsets.

They both feature 40mm drivers, both use the same True Adaptive Noise Cancelling 2.0 algorithm and both charge quickly with exceptional battery life.

In fact, with the Live 780NC providing up to 80 hours playback on a single charge, you might even be outlasting the more expensive cans.

Admittedly, you don't get a nice, hard-shell case, or a charging cable and the headband is a little more narrow.

You still get a 1.2-metre AUX cable with a 3.5mm jack at one end and a USB-C at the other (the Live 780NC doesn't have a mini-jack input). You get a soft carry-pouch to fold the headset into (with an internal pocket for the AUX cable). And who doesn't already own about a hundred USB-C charging leads?

Although the headband may be thinner than on some other headsets, it's still nicely padded, as are the earpads. I've tried using the Live 780NC to monitor the three-hour breakfast show I panel for, and I've found the headset both comfy and secure. In fact, although I can't think of anything worse than wearing over-ear headphones while exercising, I know that's some people's preference and I'm pretty confident these ones will stay firmly in place, even when running.

In fact, I'm very impressed with the build quality here. It all feels sturdy and solid - no plasticky creaks when putting on or taking off. The arm extensions click reassuringly from one step to the next and the hinges that allow you to rotate and fold the headset flat seem totally reliable.

The onboard controls are a combination of physical buttons, rockers, slide-switches and capacitive taps - so a bit of a mishmash but at least they're easy to find when you're wearing the headset and there's no chance of accidentally pausing the track when you meant to turn up the volume or take a call.

There's an element of customisation with the controls too. This is accessed via the JBL Headphones app where there are so many tweaks and settings available, they're actually divided into three different sections.

As you'd expect, you can personalise the EQ and also the way the Active Noise Cancelling works, adjusting how much of the outside world you let in, or letting it automatically ramp up or down depending on the environment. Personally, I like my ANC wound all the way up and everything else completely silenced. The Live 780NC does as good a job of this as any other set of headphones I've tried.

And that's despite having a couple less mics than its significantly more expensive sibling, the Tour One M3.

Call quality is first rate too - and using the app you can specifically boost both your and your caller's voice, as you'll see (or hear) me demonstrate in the video below.

These headphones are Auracast compatible, so although they don't come with a pre-paired Smart TX transmitter in the box, they will still work with the one JBL sells separately, or indeed with any other of the growing number of Auracast devices now available. If you're not familiar, Auracast is simply another form of wireless connection that allows multiple devices from different brands to all "listen" to the same source simultaneously.

In fact, there's quite the variety of wireless connection protocols to choose from; plain old Bluetooth 6.0, the more energy-efficient and super-stable LE Audio and if you toggle on LDAC you'll be treated to high resolution, spatial or 360° audio from compatible sources and apps.

I've been testing a selection of lossless tracks re-mixed for spatial audio on Apple Music, and I haven't been disappointed.

"Whatever You Like" by Dove Cameron is a pretty boring, formulaic pop song but the Live 780NC headphones make it sound more interesting. Suddenly, the contrast between the thin, "radio" EQ effect on her voice at the beginning of the track and the less toppy vocals later on is more stark. And while the riffs and instrumentation are kind of repetitive, the other, added-in effects in the background are given plenty of space to add colour to an otherwise dull sonic palette.

Alessi Rose gives us a lot more to work with on "Dependent." Dynamically, the song is much more of a rollercoaster, ranging from vocals over acoustic guitar, right through to a genuine "drop the beat" moment. Whether acoustic or electronic, quiet or loud, high or bassy, each element pushes through in its own place, somewhere in the spatial aural chamber the Live 780NC creates inside my head.

If I really wanted to, I could get super picky about JBL's overemphasis on bass response with the Live 780NC, but that seems churlish, given most people (me included) prefer to pump up the bass when they can. If the bass dominates the EQ too much, it does mean some of the busier tracks can sound a little muddy, although it's easy enough to fine-tune such trivialities away using the JBL Headphones app.

Make no mistake, this is a quality headset and I think it punches above its price-range in terms of features, build-quality and battery life.

    

Click here for more information and pricing on the JBL Live 780NC.

ECOVACS GOAT O600 RTK - This Is Exactly What Robots Should Do

I've reviewed my share of robot vacuums over the years and many times I've pointed out how complicated the job is, which is what makes it so impressive when the robot I'm reviewing does a good job of it.

But there's another task around the house that's potentially even more challenging - so it's no surprise one of the world's leading robot vacuum manufacturers has a robot to take care of my lawn as well.

When I took the ECOVACS GOAT O600 RTK out of its box, I was surprised. In fact, even before I opened the box, I was surprised. I was expecting something bigger, something heavier. In fact, I think I've reviewed ECOVACS vacuums that came in bigger boxes and weighed more.

This is partly because the GOAT O600 RTK's charging station is actually very minimalistic, essentially just a plastic pad with a pair of raised terminals for the GOAT to park between. In fact, the whole setup process was refreshingly straight-forward - in terms of physical installation, anyway.

There are just three elements to it; the mower, the charging station and the RTK transmitter, which is how this model of GOAT locates itself on your property. Real-Time Kinematic navigation uses satellite triangulation to position the mobile unit (in this case, the GOAT) to the nearest one or two centimetres, so its pretty damn accurate - which is probably what you want when you have a machine making its own way around your garden, spinning its blades up to 150% more powerfully than competing products.

Those blades have me completely mystified, by the way. Flip the GOAT O600 RTK over and you'll discover three tiny little swivel blades held onto a rotating disc by a single screw each. This is not your grandaddy's lawnmower, that's for sure. I can only assume this setup works due to the high speed the cutting disc rotates at. Although I don't know how it works, what I can tell you is, it does work. 

What's more, it's miraculously quiet. I'm used to having to schedule my lawn-mowing efforts around when other occupants of my house aren't home, because I don't want to subject them to the racket. With the Goat, that's no longer an issue. The cutting process itself is almost silent. It's only the rear drive wheels working that really makes any noise at all.

The three wee cutting blades are razor sharp and because they're double-sided, you can simply flip them over the other way once they start showing signs of wear-and-tear. (In theory, this will be after around 80 hours use) Then, once that second side goes blunt - another 80 hours later - you can just replace them from the spares included in the box; there are another three sets. 

Admittedly, after 1920 hours you will be forced to buy another set of twelve blades. This will set you back a whole thirty bucks. What I don't understand is why aren't conventional lawnmower blades like this? Talk about the way of the future.

Anyway, where were we? Oh, that's right - setting the thing up in the first place.

The RTK transmitter screws onto the top of a pole with a forked base that you can just plant in the ground if that's the best place for it. The idea is it needs to have an unobstructed view of the same satellites as the GOAT has, as goes about its business. Believe it or not, they can latch onto up to 45 satellites simultaneously for maximum speed and stability. 

Thanks to the lengthy cable that connects the RTK transmitter to the charging station, and the other very long cable that connects the charging station to the mains power supply, along with a set of plastic pegs and clips to hold both lines in place, you should have a reasonable amount of flexibility when it comes to where you set everything up. That's not to suggest there's an unlimited length of power lead - and obviously it wouldn't be ideal to lay any live lines directly across the very lawn your new robot is about to mow.

However, given the comprehensive startup guide warned against mounting the transmitter on boundary fences or the like, I attached it to the balustrade around my deck instead. The guide recommends as elevated a position as possible (even suggesting the roof of your house), so I lashed it on as high as I could, given the restriction of still having to connect its cable back to the charging station.

I wasn't expecting this to work for my front lawn, over the other side of my two storey house, but I felt confident I'd have decent coverage for my large and sloping back lawn.

What was worrying me was that I don't really have any "flat" bits of lawn to position the charging base on, as instructed. This is because the GOAT has to find its way home quite precisely, by lining up with the three white reflectors at the back of the base. Turns out, my concern was unfounded; fairly flat was flat enough.

The slope was always going to be the GOAT O600 RTK's biggest challenge. The ECOVACS website claims it can mow angles up to 24° but as you'll see from the video below, there's one length of my lawn that probably exceeds that by quite a margin, so it was fingers crossed as I set about mapping my yard - or at least, letting the GOAT do it automatically, using its TrueMapping 2.0 Multi-fusion RTK Navigation system.

Whether its mapping or mowing, the GOAT's AI camera can recognise over 200 types of obstacle that might turn up on your lawn - everything from pets to gnomes. I found it definitely erred on the side of caution and I had to go back and add a few hard-to-get-to nooks and corners manually, for the most accurate map possible.

This is easy enough, using the ECOVACS app on your phone. You simply connect to the GOAT via bluetooth and steer it where it needs to go via the on-screen remote control. Once you've added the new area, if it overlaps with what's already been mapped, it'll be merged automatically.

Then I literally sat back and watched the GOAT O600 RTK do one of my most hated chores for me. Because the cutting disc spins so fast, the grass is chopped into very small pieces which simply settle back into your lawn, self-fertilising it. In fact, even in the odd patch where the grass had grown very long, there was no real evidence of clippings left behind - unlike when I have a go at that sort of area with my non-robot mower.

This is important, because the last thing I want is my faithful doggo traipsing discarded clumps of cut grass inside the house. That has not happened. In fact, the GOAT even has a rain sensor and if things get too wet, it'll return to base and won't start mowing again until three hours after the rain stops.

As I expected, the strip where my lawn slopes almost directly down into the garden edging around my deck proved a little too challenging - you'll see this in the video too. This area is really more of a ditch than a slope and even I have slipped over trying to mow this on several occasions. Not ideal. No worries though; I simply marked this a no-go area on the map in the app and the GOAT carried on its merry way.

A few hours later, my back lawn looked perfect. Because the GOAT is smarter than me and remembers exactly where it's mowed and where it hasn't, you end up with these precisely parallel mowing patterns that are very pleasing to the eye - something I'd never be able to achieve myself.

What's more, the ability to schedule the GOAT to mow automatically every few days means the lawn always looks pristine - always the same length and far less likely to be overrun by weeds or moss.

Then I decided to see what would happen if I carried the GOAT O600 RTK down the steps, along the path and through the gate to my front lawn, at the diagonally opposite side of my property to where I've set up the RTK transmitter.

I'd assumed I wouldn't be able to map here and therefore the robot wouldn't work. I've never been so happy to be so completely wrong. The GOAT connected to 43 of the 44 satellites the transmitter was talking to, mapped the four separate sections of lawn I'm responsible for out front and then proceeded to mow them with no hesitation whatsoever.

The app did ask me to create a path between the back and the front, but given there are steps and gates involved, that wasn't an option. The GOAT didn't really seem to care and finished the job anyway. Glorious.

Because it's mostly plastic, as I mentioned at the top, the robot is extremely light and easy to move around. It also couldn't be more simple clean; both the GOAT and its charging station are IPX6 rated against water, so you can just rinse them off with a high-pressure hose.

ECOVACS has made one of life's most challenging household tasks so simple here - this is the gadget I've been waiting for. I don't think I'm ever going get tired of watching it mow my lawns for me. It's exactly the kind of thing people thought would be happening when they predicted the future fifty years ago. I wonder if ECOVACS makes a flying car?

    

Click here for more information on the ECOVACS GOAT O600 RTK.