Author: Duncan Pike

There hasn’t been a shake-up in the premium wireless active noise-cancelling headphone scene in a rather long time. Anyone that knows at least a little about the industry could probably list the companies and their products that sit atop most critics and reviewers ‘best of’ lists. If you’re trying to do that now and said Sony, Bose, Apple, and Sennheiser, you’d be spot on. But that hasn’t stopped other companies from trying to compete for a spot among the best. Shure is one of those companies with its Aonic range of products. We’ve spent some time with Shure’s over-ear Aonic…

After a tumultuous Easter weekend load-shedding schedule, that ranged from no shedding to Stage 3, Eskom recently announced the return of Stage 5 load shedding, much to the country’s delight. According to its most recent Power Alert, the current Stage 3 shedding will continue until 17:00 on Tuesday, 11 April. Thereafter, we’ll have to endure Stage 5 shedding through Tuesday night until 05:00 on Wednesday morning when we’ll switch back to Stage 3 until 16:00, followed by some more Stage 5. The load shedding itch that Eskom can’t scratch Feedback from Evening Peak 10/04/2023 (18:38) Eskom Availabilty: 25 920 MW…

We haven’t even reached the halfway point of 2023 yet and Samsung has already announced and launched its next round of devices. Following its Unpacked event in February where it launched its Galaxy S23 devices– and possibly the best smartphone of the year with the Galaxy S23 Ultra – the South Korean smartphone manufacturer has now brought its Galaxy Adevices to South Africa’s shelves. This time ‘round, the trio of mid-rangers includes the Galaxy A54, Galaxy A34, and Galaxy A14. If you’re familiar with Samsung’s stable, you’ll notice the absence of an A74 device which used to be the company’s…

Stuff had the chance to check out Sonos’ latest batch of smart speakers, the Era 100 and Era 300, with our own ears during their local launch. The smaller of the pair, the Era 100, is positioned to replace the Sonos One Gen 2. While the latter was released in 2019 and sold for R5,500, the Era 100 and its slightly larger R6,500 price tag are sort of expected. The Era 300 most closely resembles the Play:3 which was discontinued back in 2018. The pair have considerably different purposes. Back then, the Play:3 sold for $300, so the Era 300’s…

There’s no denying that Lamborghinis are among the world’s most recognisable automobiles. This holds true whether you’re talking about the Countach from the ‘70s or any of the Italian automaker’s hypercars since then. The new Revuelto is no different, at least on the outside. It’s a completely different story when you peek beneath the bonnet. That this is the company’s first plug-in hybrid hypercar is sure to rustle the jimmies of die-hard fans. Or induce some head-scratching at the very least. Lamborghini’s best reason to go green It would be a little naive to think Lamborghini would somehow regard itself…

Music streaming giant Spotify has announced another new feature that still isn’t Spotify HiFi or even remotely related to lossless music streaming. So we have to ask, does anyone actually care? Statistically, there’s probably at least one person out there that will so we shall also attempt to. For their sake. The new Niche Mixes ‘feature’ is geared towards two main groups of listeners – the people that can’t exist without their Airpods in their ears and the lazies that like listening to curated playlists but don’t want to go through the effort of creating any themselves. Spotify has a…

Twitter is set to receive yet more changes in what the platform’s owner Elon Musk calls “the only realistic way to address advanced AI bot swarms taking over.” To us? It looks like someone is feeling the pinch. The incoming changes involve removing the ‘old’ blue verified check marks, conditions for a user’s tweets appearing in the ‘For You’ recommendation feed, and voting in polls on the platform. The push for more Twitter Blue subs The first change we mentioned, was announced on 24 March. You may remember, after taking ownership of the company last year, Musk started tinkering. The…

Still don’t have one of the three current-gen gaming consoles? You’re probably not alone. When the PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X|S consoles launched in November 2020, the improvements over the PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox One X|S made them rather popular. The state of the world at the time certainly didn’t make getting your hands on one any easier. If you still have a PS5- or Xbox Series X-shaped gap on your shelf and were hesitant to pull the trigger, this is the sign you’ve been waiting for. How much is that console in the window? Starting tomorrow, 29…

If you’re familiar with the John Wick film series you’ll know almost every other aspect takes a back seat in favour of action and bloodshed. That was clear when the first movie debuted in 2014 and reinforced in 2017 and 2019 when chapters two and three came out. Expect nothing less from John Wick: Chapter 4. As you might’ve guessed from the title, this is the fourth instalment in the series, so you’ll want to have watched the three previous films at least once before seeing this one. For the purpose of this review, we’re going to assume that you…

Valve Corporation has finally made Counter-Strike 2 official after years of speculation and, more recently, new trademark filings, data-mined hints, and a report from veteran esports journalist Richard Lewis after speaking with anonymous sources with knowledge of the game’s development. While a concrete release date wasn’t mentioned, some lucky players will already have the opportunity to try it out in a limited test. The rest of us will have to wait until ‘summer’ (calm down, that’s winter for us South Africans) when the full game is expected to release. And like CS:GO now, it will be free-to-play. CS2 is finally…