Author: Brett Venter

If you want to show off what your shiny new EV can do, there are worse ways than to put on a little music, stick your car on some ice and slide it around while a drone films you. That’s the tack chosen by the Drake GTE, an EV built by two rich silicon valley types, Dean Drako and Shiv Sikand. You do you, Drako GTE https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3ezn0mqta5g The GTE, named after Dean Drako, was made because the company’s founders couldn’t find an electric vehicle that they actually wanted to buy. So, since they had the money to just make the…

Didi Chuxing is a service that you’ll more likely come to know as DiDi as it broadens its reach into South Africa. The Chinese ride-hailing service has just opened for business in Cape Town, following a pilot launch in the city of Gqeberha (Port Elizabeth) earlier this month. Get out of the lab, DiDi! Like current entrants Uber and Bolt, DiDi aims to get you into cars that you summon via a smartphone app. The Gqueberha pilot, which launched in 1 March this year, saw more than 2,000 drivers sign up and more than 20,000 passengers make use of the…

Stuff frequently gets to test unusual gear, including that wonderful new facial accessory that’s become so popular. But LG’s Puricare Wearable Air Purifier is a whole new level of medically-paranoid. Announced last year, at the very height of COVID-19 globally (which hasn’t gone away but has become kinda normal), we got our hands on one of the very first units to make it into SA and we’ve been using it for about a month. The short verdict? It’s an exciting piece of tech but it’ll probably be priced out of reach for most South Africans. But let’s take a closer…

If the headline has stuck Still Alive from the video game Portal in your head, our work here is kinda done. But the Triumph we’re actually talking about is one being made by the British bike manufacturer by the same name — specifically their new concept Triumph TE-1. Which is looking really rather good. And we’re not just talking about the overall design, though that does look rather attractive. It’s not hard to make an exciting motorcycle — just imagine something you’d like to fight ninja from the back of and you’re 90% there — but it’s the motor assembly…

If you use smartphones, you know who Qualcomm is — or they’ve touched your life in some way at least. And, if you tend to operate on a budget, then you’ll be touched in a slightly less expensive way soon — the chipmaker has just unveiled its new Snapdragon 780G chipset, a 5nm sliver of silicon designed for phones that don’t end in the word ‘Pro’. Which is nice and all, but what difference does it really make, besides using an even-teenier fabrication method? We’re glad you ask, hypothetical person — here’s what you need to know. Snapdragon 780G skills…

So you think your gaming machine is high-end, do you? Samsung has come out with a new RAM module that will make any gaming rig you own look embarrassed about what its packing — the tech company just unveiled a new 512GB DDR5 module. Now, you might be reading this wrong. We certainly did at first (but that might be age telling on us). It’s not a low-capacity first effort at DDR5 RAM — it’s half a terabyte of DDR5 RAM in a single module, meaning you might one day stick up to 2TB of RAM into your gaming rig.…

In case you haven’t heard, there’s a global semiconductor shortage going on, affecting everything from the delivery of smartphones to the availability of games consoles. Partly the result of the ongoing pandemic, and partly because there are only two major sources for semiconductors on the planet (Samsung and Taiwan Semiconductor, which is being besieged by drought, of all things), so chips are at a premium for basically everyone. And the increased reliance of motor vehicle manufactures on microchips means that the current shortage is also kicking the world’s automakers square in the nards — and a recent factory fire in…

When things are horrible on the ground, it’s unsurprising that people turn to the skies — things seem so much simpler up there. And, soon, there will be robots. Exploration robots, specifically. The European Space Agency (ESA) is working on a robot known as DAEDALUS, which is designed to explore caves on the lunar surface. Why? Well, to see what’s inside them, for one. And to see whether we could live inside them, for er… two. The thing about moon bases they don’t tell you in Austin Powers movies is that they’re susceptible to being punctured by micro-asteroids, which is…

Announced last night in SA and available today, Oppo’s stepping up its game in the South African market with the Oppo Reno 5. It’s not quite the company’s Find series — that’s going to have to wait — but it is a remarkably premium entry at a not-really-premium price point. We got a chance to sit down with Oppo today and explore the handset a little while discussing what’s coming next for the brand in South Africa. We haven’t had enough exposure for a proper review (that’ll have to wait a few days) but we did go hands-on with its…

So you’ve been waiting for more from the Chinese smartphone brand Oppo, have you? You’re in luck, because the Oppo Reno 5 has just dropped in South Africa and we’ve got pricing for the handset (it’s now available from both MTN and Vodacom), starting at R15,000. Meet the Oppo Reno 5 So what are you getting with Oppo’s first higher-end smartphone available in SA? It’s not quite a flagship (that role is reserved for Oppo’s Find X series of devices) but it’s mighty close. This particular handset features a 6.43in display running at 90Hz with a peak brightness of 700…