During the recent Florida hurricane, I spent a lot of money on a gas generator to run our fridge and a couple of fans. I had charged up our small chargers to help keep our iPhones and iPads going. but they didn’t last long. During our week without any power, we could have used something like the Jackery Explorer / Powerpro 500Wh Portable Rechargeable Lithium-ion Battery Quiet Generator. That certainly would have helped!
The Jackery Explorer / Powerpro is a massive battery generator that will charge a smartphone 40+ times, a laptop 3-6 times and a mini fridge for 9 hours-all at the same time, yet only weighs 12.5 lbs. It can be recharged in 6-7 hours either by AC adapter or optional solar panel. But that’s not all. The Explorer sports a 110V outlet, 2 12V DC ports, a DC cigarette lighter socket, 2 USB ports, a built-in flashlight, and an LCD display. The LCD displays battery consumption, charge and discharge status. It also shows how much power in watts is coming in and how much load is on the battery.
The built-in Battery Management System (BMS) improves battery utilization, prevents over-voltage, over-current, over-temperature with advanced safety procedures, giving complete protection to your connected devices.
If you live in an area which can lose power for extended periods of time or want a long-lasting power source for camping, The Jackery Explorer / Powerpro may be what you need. Visit www.jackery.com/power-family/power-pro for more information and it sells for $599.99 on Amazon.
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Do you brush your teeth at least two times a day, preferably right after you wake up in the morning and before you go to bed at night? If you answered yes, good for you. If you answered no, I foresee dentures in your future. Seriously though, how do you make dental hygiene a habit and can the right toothbrush be the answer? I’ve been testing a quip electric toothbrush for the last couple of weeks. Let’s see if it has made brushing is my new favorite hobby.
What is it?
quip is a compact electric toothbrush that has been designed to ditch gimmicks like Bluetooth connectivity, USB charging, reminder LEDs to change the heads, etc., in favor of creating an easy to use toothbrush that will help keep your teeth and gums healthy.
What’s in the package?
You can purchase a quip toothbrush with or without quip toothpaste. quip sent me a kit with the brush and a tube of their mint toothpaste paste.
The toothbrush is available in six colors. I was sent the copper version.
Design and features
The quip toothbrush is very compact for an electric toothbrush. It’s barely larger than a traditional plastic handled toothbrush.
The quip brush has a CNC’d aluminum handle with a bead-blasted matte finish.
The brush is made of plastic with a small flat brush head at the end of the handle, that has soft rounded DuPont nylon bristles that are surrounded by a row of rubber “fingers”.
The back of the brush head has a rubber covering with the quip logo and short nubs that can be used to clean your tongue.
As you will notice, there isn’t an obvious charging socket or USB connector built into the handle of the quip toothbrush. You might notice the power button though. It’s built into the white part of the brush head where you see the q. Pressing this button turns on a 2-minute brushing timer.
The brush head can be removed when it needs to be replaced after 3 months. It can also be removed if the AAA battery in the handle needs to be replaced. Rubber O-rings keep the mechanism water-tight.
A toothbrush holder is included with the quip. This holder has an adhesive strip on the side so it can be attached to your bathroom mirror or wall. It can also be used as a travel cover like you see above.
Let’s brush!
Since the quip toothbrush runs on one AAA ordinary alkaline battery, you don’t have to worry about charging it up for your first brushing session. All you need to do is remove it from the package, rinse the bristles, add a pea-sized blob of toothpaste, press the q button on the handle and brush your teeth.
If you’ve used other electric toothbrushes, you won’t be impressed with the way the quip feels against your teeth. Although you can feel the vibration in the handle, the bristles don’t spin or even move at all.
The vibration sensation might cause people to think that they can just hold the bristles against their teeth to clean them without actually moving the brush back and forth across their teeth and gums.
Even though the brush bristles don’t move, the vibration feature is useful because the toothbrush pulses every 30 seconds to prompt you to move to the next quadrant of your mouth. After 2 minutes, the brush pulses twice and stops vibrating to let you know that the brushing session has ended.
One thing I noticed about the quip’s aluminum handle is that it gets slippery after toothpaste and spit start running down your hand.
The toothpaste
I was also sent a tube of quip mint toothpaste. I normally use Sensodyne Pronamel toothpaste and found the quip toothpaste to have more grit than what I’m used to but the taste of the paste was just fine and it cleaned my teeth fine as well.
Final thoughts
Do I think that the quip toothbrush cleaned my teeth better than a manual toothbrush? No, not really. But I do think the quip helped me brush longer than a manual toothbrush? Yes, the 30 seconds per quadrant pulsing feature really does help you do a more thorough job of cleaning your teeth and gums.
But here’s the thing. You can go to Walgreens, Walmart, CVS, or one of many other stores and buy a manual toothbrush (with a small head and soft bristles – because that’s the best for your teeth and gums) in a pack of 4 for only $5 or so. That’s much less than what you will pay for the quip toothbrush.
A quip toothbrush starter set without the toothpaste costs $45 and you’ll then be billed $5 every three months to receive a replacement head. That works out to $60 a year. You can save $5 if you prepay $55 for a full year. You’ll also need to replace that AAA battery 3 times a year because quip doesn’t include a battery in their brush replacement kit. So let’s add another $4 for a pack of batteries to make a yearly cost of $59 a year assuming that you go the prepaid route. That means the quip will cost you $54 more a year than buying a 4 pack of manual toothbrushes for $5. The only features missing when you go with a manual toothbrush are the holder/travel cover and the 2-minute brushing timer.
While I like the look and feel of the quip, I don’t see it as a better value than a traditional toothbrush.
Source: The sample for this review was provided by quip. Please visit their site for more info.
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I’m an avid Alexa user. I use Alexa to control my lights, my Dyson, and even my air conditioner. I even miss her when I’m staying in a hotel. But until now I’ve been using the Amazon Echo Dots and Echo Taps to boss her around. I also have two Sonos PLAY:1 speakers at home, so when Sonos announced that they are bringing Alexa into their eco-system with the new Sonos One, I was ecstatic.
The Sonos One is nearly identical in design to its predecessor the PLAY:1, but it’s a bit taller, and it houses touch sensitive buttons on its top side. The touch controls let you swipe to skip a track, and tap to turn up the volume. There is also a mute “button” for the mic for when you want privacy. An LED indicator light at the top is also used to indicate when the Sonos One’s microphone is active. But having a similar form factor to the PLAY:1 is where their similarities end, because on the inside, Sonos has completely reengineered the speaker system of the Sonos One. To that effect, on the inside you get two Class-D digital amplifiers, one tweeter, and one mid-woofer, that are complimented by a six-mic array that uses an adaptive noise suppression algorithm.
To make sure your Sonos One is operating at its peak, Sonos has a Trueplay feature in the Sonos app which automatically tunes the Sonos One for the room it’s playing in. So how does the Sonos One sound? It sounds incredible for its size. I’ve been listening to the two and comparing them, and would say that the Sonos One edges out the PLAY:1 in terms of clarity. To that effect, instruments and subtle details can be heard with more detail on the Sonos One. That’s not to say that the PLAY:1 is a slouch by any means, but the Sonos One does sound better than the PLAY:1. Furthermore, it’s worth noting that a single Sonos One sounds very powerful – even when not playing in stereo mode with another Sonos One. That said, we do wish that Sonos would let us pair a Sonos One with a PLAY:1 in stereo mode, and we’re hoping that Sonos will offer that feature eventually through a software update.
Sonos has packed in a 6 microphone array into the Sonos One. As a result, Alexa is super responsive, even while music is playing. Thanks to voice capture technology with echo cancelation, you can call out Alexa and the Sonos One will hear you – even while playing loud music. The experience is way superior to the Amazon Echo Dot and Taps that I’ve been using. So far I have been testing Alexa’s music commands on the Sonos One with Amazon Music. I’ve been telling Alexa to do things like “play Haim”, or “lower the volume” and Alexa on the Sonos One has been very responsive, and in general a pleasure to use. When you do call out for Alexa, the volume on the Sonos one will duck out to a lower volume so that you don’t have to shout.
Sonos is a pioneer and leader when it comes to multi-room speaker system set ups, and Alexa on the Sonos One can be used to control other Sonos speakers connected to your network. So you can tell your Sonos One in your bedroom to play music in another room, i.e.: “Alexa, play Alanis in the kitchen”.
We tested playing music with Alexa through Amazon Music on the Sonos One, but Spotify support should arrive soon, and hopefully before the holidays. The Sonos One will actually be the first third-party speaker to offer Alexa control for Spotify. At present, not all of Alexa’s voice commands work with the Sonos One, such as asking Alexa for a flash briefing, but an update will address this soon. Speaking of updates, Sonos has a great track record with bringing out software updates that continue to improve on their devices, and they are planning on bringing support for Google Assistant and Siri in 2018.
Final Thoughts
The Sonos One represents the next step for Alexa and voice control. To that effect, instead of voice control technology coming first and sonics coming second, the Sonos One offers the perfect marriage of beautiful audio with voice control technologies. And thanks to Sonos’ commitment to software updates, you won’t have to choose Alexa over Siri over Google Assistant. You’ll be able to have your cake and eat it too.
Like its predecessor the PLAY:1, the Sonos One sounds incredible for a $199 Speaker. Plus the fact that it has got Alexa built in makes it a pretty good value. Overall, the Sonos One is another superb connected speaker product from Sonos, and we’re looking forward to future software updates that further unlock its potential.
Source: The sample for this review was provided by Sonos. Please visit their site for more info.
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When we are researching for places to spend our vacation, I always ask Jeanne to make sure that the place where we’ll be staying has internet access. Because perish the thought that I take a vacation where I can’t get a little Gadgeteer work done too.
We went on our last vacation knowing that there wouldn’t be any internet at the cabin we were renting, but I stuffed down my panic because I knew we’d only be gone for 2 full days. And as luck would have it, I had a secret weapon to take with us… the Skyroam SOLIS 4G LTE Global WiFi Hotspot.
What is it?
The Skyroam SOLIS is a portable 4G LTE WiFi Hotspot and 6000mAh power bank that provides unlimited daily internet connectivity by using Skyroam’s proprietary global WiFi network which uses local SIM service from nearly 200 carriers. It partners with the best providers to offer a seamless mobile WiFi experience for world travelers in over 100 countries using a virtual SIM, which automatically picks up the cellular connection in your area.
Using Skyroam means you don’t have to mess around with changing your existing wireless plan or worrying about roaming and overage charges.
What’s in the box?
SkyRoam SOLIS
USB Type-C cable
USB Type-C to USB adapter
Quick start guide
Design and features
The SOLIS looks like a bright orange hockey puck that has a power button on the side and a WiFi button on top.
On the back of the SOLIS is a USB Type-C connector that is used to charge the device which can run for 16 to 20hrs on a charge. The Type-C connector is also where you connect the Type-C to USB adapter so you can use the SOLIS as a back battery for your other gadgets.
The bottom cover of the hotspot can be removed to provide access to the battery compartment. In an age where our gadgets are usually sealed, it’s refreshing that the Skyroam SOLIS has replaceable rechargeable batteries.
Let’s get online
As mentioned above, I was excited to receive the Skyroam SOLIS the day before we were planning visit Turkey Run State Park where I knew that there would be no WiFi at the cabin we’d rented.
I made a mistake of not setting up the SOLIS before we left figuring I could do it when we got to our destination. That was almost a fatal mistake because the first thing you have to do to set up the SOLIS is to create an account – ONLINE. Our Verizon phone barely had a signal, which made getting online to check my email for the account info almost impossible.
After several tries and some patience, I was able to create the initial account and the SOLIS began the connection process. You have to sit through this loading screen every time you disconnect from the SOLIS hotspot and reconnect. It can take several minutes.
Luckily, SOLIS gives you 20 minutes of free time to set up the hotspot, but without a reliable connection where we were staying, it took a few tries to get it up and running.
Once you’re fully connected, you can buy your daypasses. The SOLIS comes with one pass and each additional pass after that is $9. Each daypass gives you unlimited internet access for 24 hours.
Note that you can’t turn off the SOLIS an hour after initiating a daypass, wait a day, turn it back on and expect to still have 23hrs of access left. Each daypass only lasts for 24hrs no matter if you use it during that time or not.
Also, if you travel to different countries within a day, the time left on the daypass will be calculated from the time of the location where you activated the device.
You can always see the status of your connection and time left on your daypass by logging into the Skyroam dashboard.
Each Skyroam SOLIS can support up to 5 connections. While we were staying outside the park, we had our phones and my MacBook connected to the SOLIS. The speed was pretty slow and sometimes the dashboard said it was only a 3G connection because there was barely any coverage for Verizon, AT&T or T-Mobile. But whichever wireless carrier that the SOLIS was using at the time, it was good enough for surfing, emailing, and some light Gadgeteer work.
Just be aware that the Skyroam SOLIS is not a magic internet puck. One of their partnered cell providers has to have coverage in your area for it to provide WiFi access.
Skyroam even works great while driving which means it comes in handy for long road trips where you might not want to use your phone as a hotspot.
Fast forward a few weeks… As I’m writing this review, I’m back home now and am connected to the SOLIS in my basement and have the connection speed that you see above. That probably looks really slow to a lot of you, but it works fine even for watching YouTube and Netflix videos (after some buffering time).
But is it too good to be true?
When we were at the Turkey Run State Park, the speed of the Skyroam SOLIS felt noticeably sluggish, but I was just happy to be able to surf and respond to emails so I wasn’t complaining. I thought the significant slowness of the connection was due to the fact that the cell providers in that area had very weak coverage. But as I was working on this review, I stumbled upon info that was buried in the Skyroam support pages and it made my heart sink a bit.
Skyroam markets the SOLIS as a 4G LTE unlimited global hotspot. Which it is. BUT (and it’s a big but), you don’t really get unlimited 4G speeds with this device. After you use 500mb of data, the speed throttles down to 2.5G speeds for the rest of the 24hr daypass. When I asked Skyroam to explain this wrinkle, Cory Jones, Skyroam’s Vice President, Global Marketing & Product, responded with:
“Our goal is to deliver convenient, omnipresent global connectivity for international travelers at a great value. To deliver that, we’ve optimized our service to give Skyroam customers the best performance across our global footprint of 100+ countries. Most users experience the fastest speeds possible since the majority don’t reach 500mb in 24 hours. For those that exceed 500mb in 24 hours, data speed changes to 2.5G for the remaining period of the 24-hour daypass, which compares favorably in the telecom market.
Many find the simplicity Skyroam offers to be a lifesaver – WiFi on-demand data at one rate worldwide. You can even use one daypass in multiple countries, as well as being shareable with travel buddies and among your gadgets with five devices simultaneously. We focus our service on global travelers who see the value through that lens.”
Well, that stinks.
So I created a test. I checked my speed BEFORE using 500MBs of data (see above) and then I started downloading a 512MB test file.
I thought that I had already hit the 500MB threshold before I started the test download because my MacBook reported that it was going to take 2-4 hours to download the 512MB file. Yikes…
But 30MBs into the download, I was still getting good speed using speedtest.net. So I worked on other things (using the Chrome browser with the same WiFi connection to the SOLIS) and let the test file continue downloading in the background.
I watched a few Youtube videos, surfed some of my favorite sites, read news using Feedly, answered emails, and worked on this review.
Everything slowed to a crawl when the test file download hit the 220MB mark. At that point, other tabs in my browser would not refresh. I paused the test file download and did another speed test and got the results shown above. OUCH. I waited 10 minutes and ran the speed test again with almost identical results.
Just to be sure, I checked the Skyroam dashboard to confirm that I was still connected to 4G. I was. I then decided to toggle power on the Skyroam SOLIS, connect back to it and do another speed test.
Same speed.
That speed might look much too slow to do anything worthwhile on the net, but right now I’m watching a YouTube video while I’m writing this. Granted, it took a minute or so for the video to start playing but once it started, it was fine. Low res, but viewable. So is reading and writing emails, reading my news feeds using Feedly through a browser, and even writing this review.
Bottom line: I do think that the >500MB throttling information should be highlighted for potential buyers instead of hiding it in the Skyroam FAQ pages. What do you think, does a 500MB 4G speed cap make the SOLIS less desirable?
Final thoughts
If you are an avid traveler – especially an international traveler who likes to stay connected, the Skyroam SOLIS Global WiFi Hotspot is an affordable way to have internet access where ever you travel (see the country list on the Skyroam site) when you can’t use your mobile phone as a hotspot.
As long as you can live with slower 2.5G speeds after using 500MB of data, I think the SOLIS is a useful gadget for on-demand internet access that at an affordable price.
Source: The sample for this review was provided by Skyroam. Please visit their site for more info and Amazon to order.
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If you feel compelled to take your phone out of your pocket to snap pictures and record videos throughout your day, a device like the FrontRow camera might save you a lot of time because this camera automatically records your adventures so you can leave your phone in your pocket.
What is it?
FrontRow is a camera that you wear around your neck that can capture snapshots and video either manually or automatically throughout your day to create condensed time-lapse videos called stories. The camera can also be used to live stream to Facebook, Twitter, and Youtube.
Hardware specs
Main camera: 8MP, f2.2, 1080P, 30fps, optical image stabilization
Back camera: 5MP, f2.0, 1080P, 30fps, optical image stabilization
Display: color touch screen, 640 x 572 resolution
Memory: RAM 2GB, Storage 32GB
Battery: Standby 50hrs, live streaming 1hr 45min – 1hr 55min, recording 1hr 50min – 2hr, fast charging via USB TYPE-C
Connectivity: Bluetooth and Wifi
What’s in the box?
FrontRow camera
Magnetic clip
USB cable with adapter
Adjustable lanyard
Microfiber cloth
Quick start guide
FrontRow logo sticker
Design and features
The FrontRow camera looks like a stopwatch that a coach might wear around their neck.
It comes in black and will also soon be available in white with rose gold. The camera has a premium look and feel due to the metal casing and a glass touchscreen display. The display faces against your body when it’s being worn. Above the display is a 5MP reverse camera which has an 85-degree viewing angle and below the display is the home button.
The front of the FrontRow camera has the FrontRow logo and the main 8MP camera which has a 147.5-degree wide-angle lens.
On one side of the camera is a small media button and a longer power button. On the opposite side (not shown), is a speaker and a tiny status LED that blinks in blue while charging, is solid blue when fully charged, and blinks red while video is being recorded.
On the bottom edge of the FrontRow camera is a USB Type-C port and to the left of the charging port is a microphone.
The top of the FrontRow is designed with a detachable clip. The camera comes with a lanyard clip and a magnetic stand clip.
The clips are made of metal with hooks that latch securely into the top of the FrontRow camera.
The magnetic clip can be used to attach the FrontRow to a metal surface. Be aware that the magnet isn’t very strong, so I would be wary of using it to hold the camera high above the ground.
Other mounting options in the future may include a car mount so you can use the FrontRow camera as a dash cam.
Setting up the FrontRow
The first thing you will need to do before you can start using the FrontRow camera is to charge it using the included USB Type-C cable. While the camera is charging, you can install the iOS or Android FrontRow app on your mobile device.
The app and the camera itself have an easy to use interface that provides access to images, video, and stories that have been captured with the camera as well as an interface to change settings and initiate recordings and live streaming events.
Almost everything that you can do through the app, you can also do right from the camera. This includes manually capturing video from either the main or reverse cameras.
You can also view images and watch videos right on the FrontRow’s color touchscreen display which by the way is crisp, clear, and vibrant. It’s also surprisingly fingerprint resistant.
In addition to taking snapshots with the FrontRow camera, capturing video, making time-lapse videos, and live streaming to social sites like Facebook, the FrontRow camera has a few other interesting features like a stopwatch, language translator, and a Spotify player.
Using the FrontRow as a camera
To take a snapshot with the FrontRow, you just click the media button once. If the FrontRow’s display is on and the camera is not in story mode, you’ll hear a shutter sound to let you know that an image was just captured.
If the screen is off and the camera is not in story mode, you’ll feel three vibrations with the last vibration signifying that the image was just captured.
If the FrontRow camera is in story mode, you can still snap images by pressing the media button and you will feel one vibration to let you know that the image was just captured.
Click the example images above to see the image quality. You’ll notice that the first three images are a little blurred and that part of my jacket was in the way of the lens for one of the shots. Only the selfie was sharp and clear. I noticed the blurring issue with most of the images that I manually captured. Due to the problem with blurring, I wouldn’t want to use the FrontRow as my only camera. As a live streaming camera, video camera, and time-lapse camera, it does a good job, but as a stand-alone snapshot camera, I prefer my phone.
Using the FrontRow camera to capture video and create live streaming sessions
The FrontRow camera has both optical (OIS) and electrical (EIS) image stabilization which is supposed to keep your action videos looking smooth instead of choppy. But these stabilization features won’t help if you’re wearing the camera around your neck and are walking or running around while you’re trying to capture video. Here’s a quick example of me wearing the camera around my neck while walking normally around my house.
Not very smooth is it? It’s not the fault of the FrontRow though. I don’t think any amount of OIS or EIS can help smooth out video when the camera is swinging from your neck as it’s recording. FYI: The video sample was saved in SD (720p) quality and the weird audio is due to it being a really breezy day.
Live streaming video quality works very well as long as you have a WiFi or good connection to the net through your phone. The first time I tried to do a live stream was in my car and it would not work. It kept asking me to connect to WiFi. When I asked FrontRow about this issue, they responded with:
The Facebook livestream API requires speeds greater than 50kbps. If speeds do not meet this requirement Facebook will end the stream (or not allow a stream to begin until speeds meet the required level). FrontRow suggesting to connect to a wi-fi networks is a result of needing to satisfy these speed requirements.
Here’s an example of a live stream to Facebook while my phone was connected to my home WiFi.
Note that copies of your live-streamed videos are NOT saved on the FrontRow camera or on your phone.
Using the FrontRow to capture time-lapse “stories”
Live streaming is cool, but my favorite feature of the FrontRow camera is the story feature. Stories are a group of clips that are condensed and turned into time-lapse video recordings of your day or special events. By default, stories don’t include audio, but you can add background music using the FrontRow app.
Stories are a fun way to relive your day without having to manually record a video yourself. Just put the FrontRow around your neck turn on story mode and it will do the rest.
You can customise the video clip capture length from fast to slow. The exreme left side of the slider = 3sec/clip, bicycle symbol = 5sec/clip, walking symbol = 8sec/clip, cloud symbol = 10sec/clip, extreme right side of the slider = 20sec/clip.
I decided that using the FrontRow to capture a day at Turkey Run State Park would be a worthy test. I set the camera to the walking symbol, put it around my neck, started the story mode, and we went about our day at the park. You can check out the 14-minute video below.
As you can see from the video, sometimes the clips are a bit blurry. The idea isn’t to have a perfect video of your whole day but to be able to relive the memories of the day and I think FrontRow does that quite nicely.
It’s also important to keep in mind that the FrontRow is automatically capturing video snippets all the time and that after a short while, you’ll forget that you’re wearing it. That means that the camera might capture scenes that you might not want to see or have others see like when you’re in the restroom. That’s why you can pause the story anytime you like by double clicking the media button. When you’re ready to start capturing the story again, you just double-click the button again.
Your stories will also probably include a lot of boring parts that you can cut out using the editing features in the FrontRow app. You can also add background music to your stories using the included instrumental tracks from the app.
Stories use a LOT of storage. The 14-minute video above used more than 2.5GB of space on the camera which does not have expandable storage.
Battery life
The camera has good battery life but the recording time will depend on the resolution and the speed that you choose. The video sample I included above was set to the middle speed and was able to capture a time-lapse from 9:30 am – 5 pm which is pretty impressive.
The camera also has a fast charging feature, so you can semi-quickly charge it up for your next adventure and you can live stream while charging.
Final thoughts
The FrontRow camera is the type of product that most people won’t use every day and that makes the $400 price a bit steep. That said, it is a fun gadget to have for vacations, trips, and special events because you can wear it around your neck, start the story mode and enjoy the day or event without feeling like you have to take out your phone every few minutes to snap a picture or record a video.
Source: The sample for this review was provided by FrontRow. Please visit their site for more info and Amazon to order.
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The Jackery Explorer / Powerpro is a massive battery generator that will charge a smartphone 40+ times, a laptop 3-6 times and a mini fridge for 9 hours-all at the same time, yet only weighs 12.5 lbs. It can be recharged in 6-7 hours either by AC adapter or optional solar panel. But that’s not all. The Explorer sports a 110V outlet, 2 12V DC ports, a DC cigarette lighter socket, 2 USB ports, a built-in flashlight, and an LCD display. The LCD displays battery consumption, charge and discharge status. It also shows how much power in watts is coming in and how much load is on the battery.
That’s why you can pause the story anytime you like by double clicking the media button. When you’re ready to start capturing the story again, you just double-click the button again.