Author: Brett Venter

Xiaomi hasn’t made any secrets about the fact that it’s planning to take on the world’s auto manufacturers by building EVs. It first announced its plans back in 2021, explaining that any vehicles it makes won’t be launched under the Xiaomi brand. But the new marque would be a subdivision of the company. It’s easy to say that you’re going to build electric vehicles. It’s even simpler to repeat it. The tricky bit is actually pulling that off. There are things like investment, facilities, expertise, and other essentials to acquire first, followed by regulatory approval. The Chinese tech-maker has most…

Portable battery packs are everywhere these days. With all the competition in the market, the ACDC 150W Portable Power Station — supplied by a local company called ACDC Dynamics — is a bit of an anomaly. For starters, it’s priced a little high. That’s Stuff’s most obvious complaint about it but it could well be a benefit if you’re willing to take the right view of things. More on that in a second, though. First, there’s the price you can expect to pay for this 150W power pack. It’s available online for around R4,700, though you can get it for…

One day, South Africans will no longer need to rely on backup power to get through the day. But, to quote Aragorn II, Heir of Elendil, “today is not that day”. In the absence of the Light of Eärendil (Galadriel’s gift to Frodo, if you’re feeling a little lost), it’s a good idea to have something like the Ecoflow River 2 Max on hand. For those not familiar with the brand, Ecoflow makes some of the most impressive backup batteries we’ve ever encountered. Of course, they’re usually accompanied by equally impressive prices but that’s the nature of technology. It’s rare…

Microsoft’s Xbox 360 console is almost twenty years old. It’ll be even closer to that milestone when Microsoft shuts down the Xbox 360 Store and Marketplace in July 2024 but it won’t quite make it across the finish line intact. The console’s not going away. As long as it still works, it should do what you bought it for, but the storefront is toast a little under a year from now. The last day for making a purchase from the old familiar place will be 28 July 2024. That’s how long you have to buy anything you’ve been putting off…

Names have been changing in recent months. Twitter is no longer Twitter, it’s X. Tweetdeck is XPro. Twitter Blue is X Premium, and that’s caused a few interesting questions when it has turned up on credit card statements. But you’d better be ready for that conversation if you’d like to keep using Tweetdeck. Whatever it’s called now. Tweetdeck (XPro) has long been expected to turn paid-for, even before Elon Musk entered the picture. But while Twitter only ever threatened, it seems that X has officially made the jump. Up till now, you may or may not have still had access…

It’s hard to find a smartphone that tries something novel. We’ve been saying this since 2009 or so but there are only so many ways you can design a rectangle. The differences all turn up on the inside. The Huawei Nova Y91 attempts something different, which is just the move you’d expect to see from a mid-range smartphone. The reason you don’t see as many risks at the higher end of the market segment is that there’s too much to lose. But in the price bracket the Nova Y91 occupies, there’s a massive amount of competition. Everyone plays there. The…

It is time, once again, for the cover on the digital or physical shelf to change. Stuff’s Aug-Sept 2023 issue is here and it’s packed with all the tech and gadgets you need to know about this month. If you’re looking to get on the road while retaining all the essential gear needed to keep your tech ticking over, you owe it to yourself to pick up the latest issue of the magazine.  It’s also August and that’s almost universally recognised as Women’s Month. Stuff has its annual overview of some of the most impressive women in South African tech.…

Working at Stuff means spending a surprising amount of time bumping around various online stores. It’s not enough to know what tech is new and hot, we also have to know a) where it is and b) how much it costs. One of the stores we’ve recently spent more time on is Bash, though we were never wholly ignorant of it. Stuff was most familiar with the platform in its guise of Hi Online. That has since been folded into Bash, an omnibus online store for The Foschini Group’s (TFG) collection of retail outlets. Think of it a bit like…

It might be 2023 but it’s still entirely possible that you’re using a dumb TV. That’s nothing to be ashamed of. TVs aren’t exactly essential purchases and if the panel’s still working, why upgrade? Well… streaming, obviously. That’s where the Xiaomi Mi TV Stick comes in. South Africans love media boxes, perhaps because they’re cheaper than dropping multiple thousands of rand on a full smart TV. Or maybe it’s some phenomenon we haven’t figured out yet. But if a streaming box is out of your budget range, or you just don’t have the space, a TV stick is the next…

Samsung’s folding ecosystem is expanding. It better be, we’re on the fifth generation of the Galaxy Flip lineup already. The Galaxy Flip 5 is many things but one of those things is ‘more expensive’. There are reasons for that, sure, but the thing we loved most about Samsung’s previous entries was the fact that the price was becoming more affordable. That… is no longer the case. With that in mind, should you pay R30,000 for the Galaxy Flip 5 or is it fine to pay around R19,000 (the current official price) for the Flip 4? Let’s find out. Screens like…