With daylight saving now in place and fairer weather on the horizon, it’s almost the time of year for outdoor entertaining and weekend getaways. Which means it’s also time for me to revisit tech from my “test this when the temperature’s nicer” pile.
If you’re also looking forward to Pimms cocktail parties and naps in the sun, here are some gadgets to put on your radar.
Sonos has learnt a lot since the original Move speaker, and the Move 2 is ideal as an indoor-outdoor sound machine.
A home-quality speaker that comes with you
The Sonos Roam was a revelation in 2021 – especially for anyone who’d been burnt by tinny, fragile Bluetooth speakers – with its excellent sound and ability to jump between phone pairing and Wi-Fi for maximum stability and sound quality. But it’s not really spacious enough for quiet home listening or big backyards, which is where the latest Sonos Move 2 comes in.
At $800 and three kilos, it’s a hefty speaker in more ways than one, but it also packs an impressive aural punch for a speaker you can easily carry around (the built-in handle helps). Place it in its cool ring-shaped cradle, and it works just like any other powered Wi-Fi speaker. But pick it up, and it will keep going for up to 24 hours, and can switch to Bluetooth if you move beyond the range of your Wi-Fi.
It’s freeing to not have to find the perfect in-between position to keep a smart speaker, and it’s nice to have the option of just bringing it closer, rather than turning up the volume if you’re listening to podcasts or audiobooks.
Two tweeters and a woofer support true stereo and, though the separation isn’t huge, music is nicely detailed and can be adjusted for some extra thump if you like bass. A do-it-all USB-C port on the back can charge the speaker in a pinch, have the speaker charge your phone, or connect to wired Ethernet or a turntable or CD player if you buy an adaptor from Sonos.
A microphone tunes the sound to the speaker’s surroundings, and it also supports Amazon’s Alexa and Sonos’ own privacy-preserving voice assistant. Unfortunately, like all of Sonos’ latest gadgets, Google support is limited.
Of course if you only wanted a smart speaker for inside, you could save $400 and just get a Sonos Era 100. The best thing about the Move is that it’s perfect for entertaining, camping or just listening outdoors. It’s solidly built, and is water and dust resistant, so it will survive a tumble or a pool party.
A second TV with a difference
There are already countless solutions for watching TV away from your loungeroom, say if you want to relax on the verandah or deck. But a new option from LG is both ridiculous and filled with charming utility.
As a TV, the StanbyMe is just fine. A bit small at 27 inches, with a nice bright HDR image but no support for 4K or other fancy features. At $2000, you could do a lot better. But what makes it great is that it’s attached to a wonderful stand which lets you wheel it around the house, adjust its height and angle, and adapt it to suit pretty much any situation where you might need an extra TV.
LG’s StanbyMe can put a TV anywhere you need it to be, so you don’t have to hunch over a phone or tablet while streaming in the sun.
Honestly, I was expecting to be underwhelmed, but it’s hard to fault this thing. The base is heavy enough to keep the TV stable and unable to be tipped, but the wheels glide in any direction fluidly, so you can just grip the stand and drag it around. There’s also a big battery in that base, so if you move it away from its plug it will keep going for around three hours before you’ll need to plug it in again.
There’s a full store of apps to stream over Wi-Fi, and on the back there’s an HDMI and USB port to connect to external devices. It has a slimmed-down version of LG’s usual software, but it’s still simple to optimise for movies or video games with the press of a button. You can also mirror your phone’s display on the TV, and the whole thing rotates 90 degrees if you want a portrait orientation. It comes with a phone mount you can use for video calls, or just as a handy place to put your device.
It’s a joy to wheel a TV outside to the picnic table or (in my dreams) a hammock, but there’s no official water resistance rating, so I’d leave it undercover unless you’re sure it won’t rain. And if the weather is poor, it makes an excellent cozy cinema for the kids and their toys to watch without taking over the main TV.
Action cams are for non-athletes too
If you’re heading out for an adventure and hoping to take some photos or a video that may imperil a standard smartphone, a GoPro may be just the thing for you; they’re rugged, waterproof, easy to mount to stuff and perfect for any kind of video from time-lapse or slow-mo to wide-angle POV shots or standard vertical social clips.
The GoPro HERO12 Black is easy to attach to a helmet, bike, tripod, selfie stick or anything else.
I’m no extreme sports buff or professional videographer, so a lot of the new features in the latest GoPro HERO12 Black flew over my head — GP-Log encoding, look up tables, timecode sync — but there were also several improvements over the HERO11 that I did understand and appreciate. For example, you can now connect Bluetooth earbuds and use them as a microphone for situations where you’re not close to the camera while it’s filming. There’s also a standard screw-mount underneath for attaching to a regular tripod, in addition to the familiar folding fingers. And you no longer need to mount it on its side to get vertical video; you can set it to 9:16 while horizontal.
Loading
Something I really enjoy about GoPros is that you can define all the nitty-gritty details and then save them as a profile you can switch to quickly later. You might have a cinematic profile at 4K 24fps, for example, but then a faster frame rate for action videos, or you might have a wide angle for POV shots and then a linear “flat” crop for filming others. You can also opt to capture massive resolutions and aspect ratios (up to 5.3k and 8:7) to give you a lot of flexibility if you’re planning to edit after the fact.
I’ve never filmed anything bumpy enough to give the stabilisation a proper test, but I love the horizon lock, which means videos turn out smooth and straight even if you’re swinging the camera around or rotating it.
Pricing is characteristically weird this year. You can get the HERO12 Black for $650, or you can sign up for a GoPro subscription at $35 for a year, and that gets you a special deal of the camera and $130 worth of accessories for $580.
Get news and reviews on technology, gadgets and gaming in our Technology newsletter every Friday. Sign up here.
Most Viewed in Technology
Loading
