Author: Trent Meikle

It’s official. Showmax will stop accepting new subscribers as of 31 March, before calling time on South Africa’s homegrown streamer on 30 April. That should leave you just enough time to binge whatever you’ve ignored on your watchlist now that it’s about to disappear. You know how folks don’t appreciate being able to breathe through both nostrils until they’re sick? Yeah, it’s like that. Kinda. But with Die Kantoor or Outlaws. “Disappear” is a strong word. All that content is moving over to DStv. A spokesperson for MultiChoice confirmed “Showmax content on DStv will be available to Compact and Premium satellite…

Poco may not officially grace South Africa’s shelves, but the company’s latest X8 Pro may be worth looking into. Specifically, the Poco X8 Pro Iron Man Edition, rivalling only Realme’s love of a good special edition phone. This one trades the boring boxes typical for a smartphone and goes for gold iron with a Stark Industries briefcase. As if you needed any convincing As far as smartphones go, this one is pretty good. A 120Hz-capable 6.9in AMOLED (1.5K) peeks out from the body, while MediaTek’s Dimensity 8500 Ultra chipset sits beneath the surface. It’s joined by 12GB of LPDDR5X RAM…

If it wasn’t already obvious, Stuff iare big fans of the Oppo Watch X2. It’s not surprising with a body like that and a pretty solid aversion to running out of juice. Now, it has unveiled the Watch X3 in China, bringing with it a titanium alloy body, more sensors than we know what to do with, and another solid battery. We hope, anyway. Watch this space Oppo hasn’t officially mentioned whether the wrist-clinger will see a global launch, but given that its older siblings have come to South Africa, we’re not all that worried. Available in Global Star Orange, Gravity…

If the FIFA ‘Peace Prize’ holder throwing missiles at one of the participants of this year’s World Cup isn’t enough to call the tournament off, nothing will. We may as well at least have some fun as we watch some of the world’s best footballers duke it out on American soil. Hell, they may even get around to playing some actual football. Today, FIFA announced a major partnership with YouTube that’ll bring nearly everyone into the World Cup action in June. YouTube is now a “Preferred Platform” for the World Cup, meaning broadcast partners will be able to stream the…

Last year, WhatsApp began experimenting with ‘guest chats’ on Android, and now it’s iOS’ turn at bat. What’s the point of guest chats? We can’t help you there, but we can tell you how they work before they inevitably turn up on your device, the feature having just landed inside Apple’s walled garden. For beta testers, anyway. Guest chats are for folks who somehow don’t have a WhatsApp account yet. Perhaps they’re American? Maybe they use iMessage exclusively. Either way, guest chats are exactly that — a chat built inside the WhatsApp framework, and accessible to third parties who don’t…

Nintendo just dropped a big update for Switch 2 owners out of nowhere: Handheld Boost Mode. Arriving as part of the 22.0.0 update, the feature allows Switch (1) games to act as though they were running at their docked potential in handheld mode. The original Switch uses a 720p display, while the Switch 2 uses a 1080p one. “When enabled, Handheld Mode Boost causes the performance of Nintendo Switch software while undocked to run as if it were being played in TV mode,” reads Nintendo’s support page for the feature. Toggle that Switch The feature is so obvious that we…

Right when we thought the hubbub around Apple Park had died out, the Fruit Company quietly unveils yet another product — the AirPods Max 2. Sure, owners of the current iteration might call it a nothingburger update (the same battery life, really?), but for Apple’s newbies, it’s well worth taking a look for the ANC upgrades alone. Apple’s gone and stuck the H2 chipset in this here headset, supposedly delivering a swathe of smart features. Those are worth a look, but it’s the promise of “1.5x more effective ANC” that interests us. The Max 2 comes in midnight, starlight, orange,…

It’s not often that Sony finds itself competing in the consumer headphone space. Its WH-1000 series is still considered world-class, even all these years later. But when it’s the newbie of a new market — say the open-ear, clip-on segment — it tends to try a little harder. Nowhere is that clearer than in the company’s new LinkBuds Clip. We’ve spent the past few weeks in the Clip’s company and came away not altogether surprised by what we heard. If you aren’t familiar, open-ear clip-on buds ditch the tight seal that manufacturers have cultivated for so many years. These sacrifice…

Now that Showmax is officially headed for the bins, new MultiChoice owners, Canal+, can’t afford any more missteps. Especially not one relating to its most valuable asset — sports broadcasting. SuperSport has long been one of the few providers of sports content in SA, available through DStv. Today, Canal+ confirmed that it held “fruitful and productive engagements” with Rugby SA this week, and that it would stick around on SuperSport. Canal+ doubles down on rugby The two entities came together in Randburg to host several “information-sharing sessions” to help each other understand their goals better. The end goal is to…

Soundcore Space 2, Electric Boogaloo When it comes to affordable headphones, nobody gets a reception quite like Anker’s Soundcore spinoff — especially at Stuff. It pulled off a near miracle with the Soundcore Space One, before doing it again when the ‘Pro’ came along. We’ve eagerly awaited a sequel, and according to AnkerInsider, our time has nearly come. That would be the Anker Soundcore Space 2 (Space Two?). Known as Model D1402 until Anker gets around to an official announcement, the Space 2 packs 40mm double-layer diaphragm drivers, three microphones, and four-stage low-frequency noise cancellation. Battery life has also been…