Author: Stuff writer

Think parties are ruined by people looking at their phones? Guess again with these mirth-making, ice-breaking mobile multiplayer party games… Exploding Kittens 2 | Android (R115) | iOS R80 Famous for its Kickstarter success and utter strangeness, Exploding Kittens 2 is back with – get this – even more strangeness. And exploding kittens, obviously. Nobody ever complained that you aren’t getting what you pay for, right? Exploding Kittens 2 returns with the same gut-wrenching gameplay (have you ever had a five-nope rally?) felt in the real-life card game, now with customisable avatars, plenty of game modes, and a good few hours of…

What a year! What a lot of gear! Struggling to remember what’s hot and what’s not? Our annual Gadget Awards have done the hard work for you – join us in celebrating the very best tech to have come out in the previous 12 months. If you’re planning to add something to your gadget arsenal, these are all excellent choices. After all, they’ve just won an award. CONSOLE GAMING ACCESSORY OF THE YEAR RAZER WOLVERINE V3 PRO Fancy becoming an esports champion? A pro-level gamer for whom every nanosecond counts? Then a standard Xbox controller simply isn’t going to cut the mustard.…

What a year! What a lot of gear! Struggling to remember what’s hot and what’s not? Our annual Gadget Awards have done the hard work for you – join us in celebrating the very best tech to have come out in the previous 12 months. If you’re planning to add something to your gadget arsenal, these are all excellent choices. After all, they’ve just won an award. PREMIUM TABLET OF THE YEAR APPLE iPAD PRO (M4) Yes, we know it costs almost as much as a MacBook, but the latest iPad Pro is just irrepressible, building powerful enhancements onto the excellent…

What a year! What a lot of gear! Struggling to remember what’s hot and what’s not? We’ve done the hard work for you – join us in celebrating the very best tech to have come out in the previous 12 months. If you’re planning to add something to your gadget arsenal, these are all excellent choices. After all, they’ve just won an award. PHONE OF THE YEAR APPLE iPHONE 16 It was awesome even before its headline innovation, the Apple Intelligence suite of AI tools, turned up . Robo-assisted shopping lists aside, though, there’s more than enough about the iPhone…

It’s been a couple of months since Tim Cook scrambled down your chimney to deposit new toys directly into your iPhone and iPad – so Stuff has dug into the best ones to try first. From navigating the basics of your new suite of features to the sort of essential apps you can’t (or really, shouldn’t) live without, we’ve got you covered. THE BASICS Back up It’s unlikely that installing an operating system upgrade will obliterate your data. But it’s not impossible. So, unless you like living dangerously, ensure you take a full iCloud backup before upgrading your iPhone or iPad.…

If you’re keen to binge-watch so many box sets your eyes will turn 16:9, check out these tips from Stuff and get even more from Amazon’s on-demand streaming TV service, Prime Video. As one of South Africa’s more affordable streamers at R80/m, Amazon’s Prime Video is stacked with thousands of movies and series – featuring original content like The Boys and Invincible we can promise you won’t want to put down… THE BASICS Nuke the ads The big new Prime Video feature for 2024 was ads. ‘Yay.’ In terms of the annoyance factor, they’re about halfway between YouTube and ITV. They’re not a…

Alexa, tell me the exciting origin story of the very first Echo! Sorry, but you can’t chat with websites just yet… although, given how many Alexa devices have arrived since the original Echo, it’s probably only a matter of time. After all, back in 2014, the idea of a talking speaker was just as strange, and early adopters were cautious. Sure, it was easier to ask Alexa to play a tune than pulling out your phone to send it across via Bluetooth. But there was something vaguely dystopian about that first always-connected, always-listening Amazon Echo. The severe industrial design surely…

Hey, I’ve seen this one! Despite glasses-free 3D peaking in 2011 with the release of the Nintendo 3DS, tech companies can’t seem to take a hint, with Samsung stepping into 2025 with another fresh attempt to make the technology a staple. First demoed at CES 2024, Samsung has returned a year later with an almost complete product – the 27in Odyssey 3D monitor – that’ll have you watching The Adventures of Sharkboy & Lavagirl the way Robert Rodriguez always intended. It’ll manage the feat with the help of AI, of course, and more importantly a ‘lenticular lens’ “attached to the front…

You’ve outdone yourselves. We’re now apparently getting nostalgic about a circuit board. Not just any circuit board: this is the original Raspberry Pi. And although it looks like it’s been fished out of a parts bin, this tiny device kickstarted a revolution upon its release a decade ago. A team including engineering guru Eben Upton and Elite creator David Braben had identified a crisis in computer science: interest was dwindling and many of those who did rock up at varsity had barely any programming experience. The Pi was designed to get people experimenting. Did they first experiment by communicating with…

Not in the mood for stressful sprinting or murderous mayhem? These mobile games are designed to bring inner calm rather than making your temples throb… Townscaper | Android (R87) | iOS (R60) A city-building game without the busywork, Townscaper dumps you in an endless expanse of water and has you tap the screen to plonk down little islands. Depending on where blocks are positioned, oddball structures and features automatically appear, such as lighthouses, gardens, washing lines and – bizarrely – UFO-like buildings improbably suspended by way of gigantic fans. Mini Metro | Android (R21) | iOS (R80) Subways aren’t generally…