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Grace Digital looks back to move forward with the new Mondo+ Classic internet radio

NEWS – Back in 2012, I reviewed the Grace Digital Mondo Wi-Fi Music Player and Internet Radio and liked it a lot. Say what you will about the viability of internet radios in today’s world of smartphone radio apps, the still popular Mondo is available from Grace Digital as the improved Mondo+. Grace has now gone a step further and made an improved retro/traditional looking version of the Mondo—the Mondo+ Classic wireless internet radio. This radio looks like a cross between the original Mondo+ and the newer Encore+ Wi-Fi speaker and internet radio.

Like the Mondo+, the Mondo+ Classic comes with access to over 100,000 internet radio stations as well as Bluetooth and Chromecast. The Classic can be controlled via the front panel, an included infrared remote or even the Grace Digital smartphone app. It doubles as a bedside alarm clock with 5 custom settings, snooze and sleep timers and daytime/nighttime back-lit display. 

Despite its small size, an integrated Class D 25 watt amplifier with 4” full range speaker delivers deep bass and crisp highs. Customize the sound from 5 preset equalizer settings or modify the bass and treble to your personal taste. Supported audio formats include AIFF, AIFC, WAVE, CAF, NeXT, ADTS, MP3, AAC/ACC+, Ogg Vorbis, FLAC, WMA. A 3.5” full color backlit LCD display shows relevant station info as well as album art and artist and song data.

The built in apps include iHeartRadio, CBS radio, BBC, NPR, SiriusXM (subscription required), sleep sounds, Calm radio, SHOUTcast, Live365, and podcasting. Play Amazon Prime music, iTunes and any other music via Bluetooth 4.1. It works with 802.11b/g/n routers (Amazon music app will be embedded in January 2019). Available via the smartphone app is Pandora, TuneIn, Google play, Spotify, YouTube music, BBC, NPR and hundreds of others. The Mondo+ Classic can also be connected to a PC, Mac or NAS drive.

Because of the Chromecast built-in function, you can group the Mondo+ Classic with any of Grace Digital’s speakers that have built-in Chromecast for flexible and custom audio everywhere in the home. You can connect an external audio device to the line in jacks, or connect the Mondo+ Classic to your home stereo via the line output jacks. You can also charge your smart phone via a USB jack or a 10 watt Qi charging pad on top of the radio!

The Grace Mondo+ Classic wireless internet radio comes in both black or walnut wood grain finish. It is available now and sells for $249.99 US. Visit Grace Digital for more information. 

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Grace Digital looks back to move forward with the new Mondo+ Classic internet radio originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 7, 2019 at 8:00 am.

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Withings announces 2 new fitness watches and a 3-in-1 blood pressure monitor

NEWS – One of my all-time favorite health and fitness brands is Withings and today at CES in Las Vegas, they are announcing 2 new wearables and an updated blood pressure monitoring cuff. Let’s start with the watches.

The new Withings Move watch is a customizable and very affordable analog watch that will be available in a variety of colors and face styles. With a wallet happy price tag of only $69.95 and featuring water resistance up to 50M and an 18-month battery, the Move watch has automatic tracking of daily activities including walking, running, swimming, sleep, and now cycling. The watch is now available for pre-order with shipping on February 5th.

The second new Withings wearable is the Move ECG watch which features an analog face, up to one-year battery life, and the ability to record a medical grade electrocardiogram (ECG) on-demand. ECGs can detect heart conditions such as atrial fibrillation (AFib) which can lead to heart failure and strokes.

Move ECG includes three electrodes to ensure measurement accuracy. Two electrodes are discreetly integrated inside the main body of the watch, and the third electrode is in the stainless steel bezel of the watch. When users experience symptoms such as palpitation, they simply need to touch both sides of the bezel to start recording anytime and anywhere.

The Withings Move ECG will be available in Q2 2019 for $129.95.

Last but not least, we have the new Withings BPM Core which is a 3-in-1 heart health device that can take blood pressure readings, electrocardiograms (ECG), and you can use the BPM Core to listen to your heart with the built-in a digital stethoscope.

ECG used to identify atrial fibrillation (AFib), a serious form of irregular heart rhythm that can lead to heart failure, fatigue and shortness of breath and is a major risk for stroke. In addition, its digital stethoscope can provide early detection of valvular heart disease, characterized by damage to one of the four heart valves that may require surgical intervention.

The Withings BPM Core will be available for purchase in Q2 2019 for $249.95. For more info about all of these devices, please visit withings.com

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Withings announces 2 new fitness watches and a 3-in-1 blood pressure monitor originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 6, 2019 at 8:00 pm.

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MATRIX announces new PowerWatch 2 smartwatch

NEWS – The Consumer Electronics Show (CES) has kicked off today in Las Vegas Nevada and that means lots of new interesting product announcements will be flooding your tech news feeds for the next week. Let’s start things off with an announcement for the PowerWatch 2 from MATRIX. This is the same company who brought us the PowerWatch X which our own Andy Jacobs reviewed last year. The unique feature of the PowerWatch was that it converts the wearer’s body heat to power. The new PowerWatch 2 still uses thermoelectric (TEG) tech and the wearer’s body heat as a power source, but they’ve also added a solar cell to make sure that you NEVER have to charge the watch. Ever.

The older version of the PowerWatch that Andy reviewed also only had a mono display, while the new PowerWatch 2 will have a full-color LCD display.

Other features include a built-in intelligent heartrate monitoring capabilities, an onboard GPS, and water resistance up to 200m. PowerWatch 2 is available for pre-order today through Indiegogo, starting at $200 for early bird pre-orders ($499 MSRP). They plan to ship to backers in June. Check out their campaign and visit powerwatch.com and matrixindustries.com for more details about the tech and their products.

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MATRIX announces new PowerWatch 2 smartwatch originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 6, 2019 at 11:45 am.

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Nekteck 90w USB Type C Wall Charger review

REVIEW – Wall chargers, especially for laptops are a very necessary evil. It’s a pain to carry it with you from place to place, but if you make the choice to leave it behind, you’re almost guaranteed to run out of juice. Until recently, if you chose to run an Apple laptop of some variety, you were limited to using Apple manufactured wall chargers as well as a result of their proprietary magnetic connector. With the switch to USB-C on more recent laptops, there are now some excellent alternatives. Nekteck makes just such a product and as it would happen, sent one over for review.

What is it?

It’s a USB-C Wall charger for any device that needs up to 90w of power. That means the primary target is laptops, but USB-C devices of any kind should also be able to use this. If you’re thinking that was a long product name up in the title, it’s actually quite a bit longer. Here’s the full product name that I would guess is aimed at Google keywords…

Nekteck USB-IF Certified 90W Type C Wall Charger with Built-in Cable Power Delivery Compatible with MacBook/New MacBook Pro, Google Pixel 3/2/ XL, PixelBook, Galaxy S9 S9+ S8, Nintendo Switch, Black

How’s it work? Let’s move along.

Hardware specs

  • Input: 100V-240V/AC, 50/60Hz
  • Output: Type-C PD 90W Max
  • USB-C Output :5V/3A,9V/3A,15V/3A,20V/4.5A
  • Dimensions: 3.34 x 3.34 x 1.18 inch
  • Cable Length: 6ft
  • USB-IF,UL/CE/FCC/RoHS certified with 6 circuit design protection( Automatic Recovery, Over Voltage Protection, Over Current Protection, Short Circuit Protection, Safe Charging, Radiation Protection )

What’s in the box?

  • 1 90w USB Type C Wall Charger

Design and features

The square design is rather unassuming. The plastic enclosure features a textured matte surface with a polished gloss logo on the front face and along the perimeter on each side.

There are two key physical features of the design. Foldable US style prongs…

and a tethered USB Type-C cable with a well designed 90º strain relief at the connection to the charger.

Setup

Connect the wall adapter to a compatible outlet, and then the USB connector on the end of the cable to the USB-C or USB-C (PD) device that you need to charge.

Performance

There are some products that you just need to work every single time. A laptop wall charger is a perfect example of that. Like many of you, my day job requires a laptop. I need to go from my desk, to meetings, back to my desk, home and back again. A single wall charger can totally handle the job, but you’ll leave it behind sooner or later.

The Nekteck charger is straightforward in that the cable is permanently attached with the connector you need on the end. The 90º tethered end points down and flexes to either side depending on where your outlet’s location is to you. The prongs fold easily, but have enough over-center resistance that they aren’t folding on you every time you blindly try to plug it in the wall. The USB-C connector slides into my Mac easily and the last few millimeters of travel provide that satisfying “snap” sound that lets you know you’re properly connected. Side note: I only noticed in posting the below picture, how much more USB-C connectors get beat up over the older magnetic style.

The cable is similar in thickness to the cable that came with my Apple charger, but seems a bit less flexible which makes it a bit harder to wrap it up for carrying. Speaking of carrying, there’s no cable management for keeping it in the wrapped position. Apple doesn’t provide a solution for theirs either, and their cable is completely separate which arguably makes it worse. Luckily, I had something available to use for that purpose that works just fine.

I already have a power solution at my work desk, so with this new charger in hand I moved the Apple one to my home desk and placed the Nekteck in my pack for daily availability. Almost immediately, an extended China trip (real test) reared its head.

I’m happy to report that the Nekteck charger worked great and for that, I’m extremely thankful as I did not bring a backup. I was able to use it to repeatedly charge my 15″ MacBook Pro as well as a 10,000mAh portable power bank I travel with. Thanks to Nekteck’s ability to handle up to 240v input, it did so speedily and without fail in hotels, factories, and airports throughout my China trip without the use of any travel adaptors/converters and generally had no issues at all.

In fact, the only challenge I was faced with was a very common issue that plagues a lot of wall outlets over there; loose wall outlets. The Nekteck charger is not super lightweight, and its orientation needs some tension on the prongs to hold it in the outlet. The above photo is one of those, and it would stay there for about 15 seconds before rotating down and falling out. In those scenarios, I had to find something to prop up the bottom of the charger to keep it from falling out of the wall. This is 100% an outlet issue, but just wanted to mention it for any of you traveling internationally.

I should point out that the increased speed of PD (Power Delivery) is only available on devices that support PD. In general, the Nekteck will power an USB-C input device as fast as that device allows it to charge.

What I like

  • Price
  • Tethered, strain relieved cable
  • Foldable prongs
  • Black color

What needs to be improved

  • Cable management for travel

Final thoughts

There’s not much to find fault with here. Nekteck’s 90w charger works great. It’s a little more square, but at $69 for 61w and $79 for 87w for the comparable Apple chargers, you can buy 2 of these and have money left over. This one is staying in my pack.

Price: $29.99
Where to buy: Amazon
Source: The sample of this product was provided by Nekteck.

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Nekteck 90w USB Type C Wall Charger review originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 6, 2019 at 11:00 am.

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A drone for the flipside of the horizon

NEWS – The Titan Underwater Drone will be displayed at this years CES conference. The drone is a product of  Geneinno, a technology company dedicated to the design of modern underwater equipment. They characterize Titan as the world’s first underwater drone with a robotic arm. I’m skeptical that this is actually a “drone” since it must operate tethered and doesn’t make a droning noise when piloted. Furthermore, remotely operated vehicles have been used in the ocean for over 60 years and ROV Jason used to explore the Titanic with its robotic arm, is at least 30 years old.

Superlatives aside, the Titan is still a neat bit of tech and last year’s model won the coveted Red Dot Design Award at CES. This years model is able to dive up to 492ft, making it the deepest diving underwater drone with a 4K camera, It comes with precise hovering, 3000 lumens of illumination, lens filter support, and is capable of high and low angle photography (-60° to 60° pitch). The Titan features self-balancing and anti-current algorithms for the best underwater performance. A port on the hull base can be used for attaching a robotic arm, hydrophone, sonar or other extension developed in the future. The Titan currently retails for $2,599 and includes the robotic arm. Visit geneinno.com for more info.

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A drone for the flipside of the horizon originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on January 6, 2019 at 10:00 am.

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