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We’ve looked at a few products from Pepper Jobs over the years and all of them have been the excellent. They make the best versions of relatively generic electronics you might find on Amazon like mini PCs, remote controls, and portable displays. They do cost a little more than the generics but in exchange the products are of a higher quality and often come pack with more features.

The XtendTouch XT1610F V3 is no exception. On the surface it looks like a run-of-the-mill portable display but its feature set is extensive. For example:

• It works with a Nintendo Switch without the need for a dock. Although it will not work with the Switch Lite that lacks a video output.
• It emulates an Apple Magic Trackpad when an Apple machine is connected to it, adding some cool touch functionality.
• It also works as a touchscreen with Windows and some Linux devices like the Steam Deck
• It has a full size HDMI port for devices that don’t support USB-C video output along with a battery that can power the display for several hours

You can see all of these different scenarios in the review video:

Because it’s powered by a battery I found it was a bit brighter than some of the USB bus powered displays we’ve looked at previously. While it’s limited to 1080p at 60 hz I did find that its functionality more than made up for its lack of higher resolutions and frame rates.

You can see some other examples of other Pepper Jobs products here.

Hot on the heals of my USB 4 overview video we take a look at an Orico USB 4 drive that supports the new Thunderbolt derived 40 gbps mode. You can watch the video here.

If the artwork looks familiar it’s because it’s based on the artist Piet Mondrian‘s work which has found its way into a variety of products from handbags to furniture.

The drive incorporates an NVME SSD that can take full advantage of the Thunderbolt data bandwidth, delivering north of two gigabytes per second of read and write performance. There doesn’t seem to be any noticeable thermal throttling either even when under load for an extended period of time.

On a Thunderbolt equipped PC or Mac it will appear as a Thunderbolt drive. On Windows you will also need to enable write caching to get its full performance potential. When activating that option be sure to eject the drive properly through the Windows interface before physically removing it to prevent data loss and corruption.

Unfortunately all of this performance comes at a high cost: $349 for the 1TB version and $599 for the 2TB. You can actually build your own version of this using an Orico USB 4 enclosure for less money.

While the drive is backwards compatible with USB 3.x equipped computers the performance will be no different versus other lower cost USB portable SSDs. Also of note is that the USB 4 standard does not require manufacturers offer the 40 gigabit speed option – only the 20 gigabit speed is required to meet the standard. We talk more about the confusing mess that is modern USB in this video.

My latest video review is of the Nreal Air display glasses.

I was excited to try these glasses out as I’ve been looking for a portable display that I can wear for watching movies & TV shows on long flights. While these can largely accomplish this goal for many people, like all VR/AR products your individual mileage will vary based on how they fit. And unfortunately these did not fit well for me at all.

First the good: the image is nice and bright and very visible even in a well lit room. The visual quality is pretty good thanks to their use of an OLED display for projection. The glasses also come with a lens cover that blocks out all of the ambient light so you can see nothing but the screen. Because the glasses don’t have a battery they are very light weight vs. a VR headset or similar device. They are powered by the device you plug them into.

I tested these on a variety of devices including an iPad Mini with USB-C connector, a Steam Deck,  a Macbook Air and a number of other USB-C equipped Windows PCs that can output video through their USB-C ports. Everything pops up just as quickly as it does with a traditional monitor. 

But there’s still a lot here that needs work:

1.  If your face doesn’t conform to who Nreal engineered this product for you won’t have a good experience. I tried all three nose pieces included in the box and could not get a comfortable fit. The big problem is that the areas where the image is projected sits slightly above my field of vision when I am seated looking forward.

As a result I had hard time seeing the bottom of the projection especially for vertically oriented tablet and phone screens. But even horizontally aligned screens presented difficulty seeing the very bottom. It would have been better if Nreal offered a way to reduce the size of the projected image which would have helped my situation.

You can see me struggling with fit in this livestream.

2. Compatibility for their augmented reality features is extremely limited to a small number of phones. While I don’t think most people buying these devices are getting them for the AR functionality it’s still important to note as the only way the image can be adjusted is in that AR mode. I’m not sure why they are advertising Steam VR compatbility when it’s clearly not able to do that. 

3. Smartphones will be hit or miss overall. Most Android phones with a USB-C connector don’t output video through the USB-C port so that will limit even mirroring usage to a small number of devices. iPhones and lightning equipped iPads will need to buy two adapters: one from Apple to get an HDMI video output, and another from Nreal to adapt that HDMI output back to USB-C.

The Nreal adapter will also work with other devices that have an HDMI output but not a USB-C port. It is also required for the Nintendo Switch but note the Switch has to be in its dock for this to work which limits the portability significantly. 

Overall this felt very much like a “minimally viable product.” It doesn’t fit everybody, the feature set is lacking, and while its core functionality of providing a wearable display works the image flickers a bit and is not adjustable. 

My latest laptop review is of the Lenovo ThinkPad Z13 Gen 1 (affiliate link). You can check it out on my YouTube channel here!

This is really a “concept car” for future ThinkPad iterations as it’s very different from the familiar ThinkPad look and feel we’ve come to expect over the past several decades. The Z13 has polished metal edges, a glass haptic clickpad, and a keyboard that feels very much like a mashup of a deep travel ThinkPad keyboard and something from Lenovo’s general consumer laptops.

The trackpad is much improved over Lenovo’s prior attempt at a haptic device. It anticipates gestures much more effectively and gets closer to Apple’s implementation of the technology.

But for those who are accustomed to the trackpoint nub this new input mechanism will take some getting used to. This is because the trackpad lacks the physical buttons found on more traditional ThinkPads making it very difficult to figure out where to place your thumbs. It works but I think a little bump or something that can help users feel their way around would work better.

Performance and battery life are great on this one thanks to the 6000 series Ryzen processors it ships with. Everything from gaming to video editing performed well for a machine lacking a discrete GPU.

The buried lede with this machine though has to be its USB4 connectivity. USB 4 finally brings Thunderbolt compatibility to Ryzen laptops. This allows for connecting external GPUs and other 40 gigabit per second Thunderbolt 3 & 4 devices. You can see more in my video last week about USB 4 which uses this laptop as a demonstrator.

All in this is another nice laptop from Lenovo. Will ThinkPad users buy enough of them to move the ThinkPad brand in a new direction? That I am sure is what Lenovo will be measuring in the months ahead.

The Analogue Pocket, like many of the previous Analogue devices, is the gift that keeps on giving. This is because these consoles are based on FPGA technology that allows for the chips to be reprogrammed on the fly to behave like anything developers can conjure up.

The Pocket is Analogue’s portable system that was able to initially play most of the portable game consoles of the last twenty years like the GameBoy, Game Gear, Atari Lynx, GameBoy Advance, etc. But now that they’ve opened up the system’s architecture a number of other systems are now playable too.

In my latest Pocket update video we take a look at the Neo Geo, NES, SNES, and Sega Genesis / Mega Drive cores along with an arcade game. The community is also putting together some other things like an auto-update script that keeps everything up to date with a single click.

My latest video is a new sponsored tutorial series I’m doing for Logitech, the owners of the Mevo streaming camera brand.

As a lifelong video nerd I’m always on the look-out for new and interesting video production tools.

Back in 2016 a little camera called the Mevo hit the market. I reviewed it back then and liked it because it was able to digitally crop and zoom the image to make it look a lot more dynamic than just a static shot. It could even automatically “switch” to the person talking with a medium close up.

Additionally the camera was able to livestream to popular platforms without the need for a PC. All that was needed was a smartphone and it could all work wirelessly thanks to the built in battery on the Mevo camera. I gave it to some friends who run a local news site and were able to add a whole new angle to their news coverage. It is a solid product for people who want more than a static shot but also simplicity.

Just before the pandemic hit Mevo came up with a new camera called the Mevo Start. It added a larger battery and integrated some additional features including the ability to have the camera output via NDI to the network.

One other feature of the Mevo line is to combine multiple cameras into a single production using their Multicam app. Like the single camera version it doesn’t require a PC and can run on a phone or tablet which can then stream it out to a provider and record at the same time.

This first video in the series will go from unboxing to livestream in about 20 minutes! We’ll dive into specific features in future videos in the series. See it here!

The other day I got in a Lenovo Z13 Gen 1 (affiliate link) laptop to review. This one is powered by a Ryzen 6850U processor which performs great graphically on its own but of course would do better with an external discrete GPU.

Up until now you really couldn’t get a Ryzen laptop that could support an external GPU because most (if not all) did not have a Thunderbolt port. Thunderbolt uses a USB-C connector but the underlying technology was proprietary to Intel.

Recently Intel opened up the Thunderbolt architecture which allowed the USB IF to incorporate that technology into their USB 4.0 standard. You’ll now see 40&20 gbps USB 4.0 devices which are functionally the same as Thunderbolt devices along with Thunderbolt compatibility on USB 4 equipped computers.

In my latest video I put this compatibility to the test with the Z13 which has two USB 4 ports built in. I plugged in a Thunderbolt SSD, 10 gig ethernet adapter, and capped it off with an external GPU with an Nvidia GTX 1070 installed. Everything worked just as seamlessly as it does on a Thunderbolt equipped Intel PC.

USB remains a confusing mess but this development does help simplify things slightly for those looking to connect Thunderbolt devices. But don’t worry, the USB IF has plans to keep the confusion going with USB 4 2.0. Yes you read that right. We’ll talk more about that on the next Wrapup.

While you can do a lot with a Plex server on their free tier, many of the features we cover in my sponsored Plex series require having a Plex Pass (affiliate link).

This month’s sponsored Plex video takes a look at most of the features a Plex Pass brings you so that you can decide whether or not you need one. Plex maintains a full list on their support pages, but it’s always helpful to see how these features work in video form to get a good look at it.

For me the biggest feature is hardware transcoding. This allows you to efficiently stream high bitrate media at lower bitrates suitable for streaming over cellular connections. Plex’s support for hardware transcoding makes this process a seamless one that starts up immediately with minimal processing load.

But there are a bunch of other features too like downloads for offline viewing, DVR functionality with a TV tuner, a cool music player called Plexamp and more.

Learn more in the video!

My latest review is of the new HD only Chromecast with Google TV.

Google’s Chromecast was a bit of a game changer when it was first released in 2013. Although it lacked an interface and required a smartphone to work it was very popular due to its low cost of entry – it sold for about a third of what other TV boxes cost at the time.

Today there are many super low cost TV devices that have much greater functionality which is why it looks like Google is phasing out its single purpose Chromecast device in favor of a more robust Android based platform called Google TV. Last year they released a Google TV for 4k televisions and now they have an HD only version priced competitively versus similar offerings from Roku and Amazon.

While it retains the casting features from the original Chromecast it adds the Google TV functionality which allows for the installation of apps and games. It also works as a Google Assistant allowing for voice control of home automation devices.

Performance-wise it’s about the same as the Google TV 4k edition they released last year but costs a lot less. Google limits the video output on the HD model to 1080p only but it otherwise retains all of the features of the more expensive version including its support of Atmos surround sound.

Google TV is an enhancement of Android TV found on many smart televisions and set top boxes. Those enhancements come in the way of recommendations based on your personal preferences and a watch list feature to organize content across many different providers.

The only shortfall with its recommendation and watch list feature is that it’s not quite universal. While Netflix has a button on the remote and is pre-installed on the Chromecast when it first boots up, you can’t actually add Netflix content to the watchlist nor will it include any Netflix content in its recommendations.

But for the price it’s a solid offering especially if you’re tied into the Google Home ecosystem. Android TV’s app ecosystem is substantial and you’ll find some of the games you may own on your smartphone will also appear in your app library on the Chromecast.

The folks from the KOREA-US SMEs go TOGETHER show invited us to visit a Korea-US startup summit in New York City this week. Although a majority of what we saw doesn’t have a direct consumer impact I found the approach many of these companies are taking to fill small market niches to be interesting.

One of the more innovative technologies was from a company called Mycel that is making leather out of mycelium mushrooms. They’re also looking at ways to make meat substitutes from their process as the texture very closely matches that of animal tissue.

You can check out my dispatch video of the event here! In full disclosure they covered our travel expenses and sponsored the trip.

The startups featured here were connected to larger Korean companies like Hyundai in the hopes that these larger Korean companies can help incubate other startups both inside and outside of Korea.

I started using Macs a lot more around 2007 when Apple switched from PowerPC processors to Intel. This allowed me to run Windows applications either by directly booting using Apple’s “Boot Camp” feature or by spinning up a virtual machine using Parallels or VMWare Fusion.

Windows compatibility was a casualty of Apple’s switch away from Intel in favor of their own custom silicon. But that feature loss was only temporary. Shortly after the release of the first batch of M1 powered Macs, Parallels released an ARM version of their virtualization software that could run the ARM version of Windows 10 on M1 Macs.

I didn’t expect much but I was surprised in my review of Parallels at the time that the original Macbook Air ran ARM Windows better than a dedicated ARM Windows PC I had looked at previously. The subsequent Windows ARM laptops I looked at also fell short of the Mac’s performance.

Fast forward almost two years and things are even better with the release of Windows 11, Parallels 18, and more powerful M1 and M2 Apple processors.

This week I installed Parallels on my M2 MacBook Air to see how far things have come. You can see my full review here.

In my testing the Macbook Air performed on par with the Lenovo ThinkPad X13s which is to date the best ARM based Windows laptop I’ve reviewed. Windows boots up in a few seconds on the Mac and I found its compatibility with ARM, x86 and x64 apps to be just as good as a dedicated Windows ARM machine.

Installation was super easy too – you’ll see a big Windows button on the Parallels interface that will download an official copy of Windows 11 from Microsoft and automatically configure it. In my testing I was able to get to the Windows desktop in less than 10 minutes. Just note that Parallels does not come with a Windows license so that will need to be purchased separately.

Parallels has a number of free ARM Linux distributions also available as one click installs. In my review we booted up Ubuntu and it ran pretty nicely at a similar level of performance to the Windows virtual machine. If your Mac has a lot of RAM you can even run multiple operating systems simultaneously.

In my review I was able to boot up an older x86 version of Quickbooks along with a 64 bit application I use for my amateur radio work. Game players will certainly want to stick with an Intel or AMD based computer but older games like Half Life 2 run surprisingly well on the Mac through Parallels.

Microsoft deserves some of the credit as the ARM experience with Windows 11 is so much better than Windows 10. Prior to 11 x64 compatibility required running with a beta version of the operating system. Now things feel much more natural and integrated. Most Windows apps will just run without much aggravation and configuration.

Apple is still much further ahead on their ARM transition but Windows 11 gives me some hope that at some point Windows users will enjoy the performance and battery life that Apple users experience on their Apple Silicon based computers.

Parallels has a 7 day free trial if you want to take out for a test drive. Click here to visit their website (compensated affiliate link).

The standard version should work fine for most Macbook Air users but the Pro version allows for more CPU cores and RAM to be made available to the virtual machine. Unfortunately that version requires an annual subscription.

After waiting for a month and a half my M2 Macbook Air finally showed up. While this is not as groundbreaking performance-wise as its predecessor there is still a lot to like about this new “sorta entry level” device in the MacBook line.

You can watch my full review here.

The biggest change with this new device is the hardware – it is a completely new design that comes in a bit thinner and lighter than the M1 model that was introduced almost two years ago. They improved the display, webcam (complete with notch), and of course added the M2 processor for a performance boost. The keyboard is similar to the one found on the 14 and 16 inch pro models although the thinner case results in shallower key travel.

I opted for the 8 core CPU/10 core GPU model along with 16GB of RAM and 512GB of storage. I went with the extra GPU cores because I plan to edit video occasionally on it along with a game or two. I am not certain if this would result in any substantial performance difference but I’ve found when buying Macs you’ll get more longevity by getting the best performing one you can afford.

The MacBook Air is a fanless device so it will throttle down by about 30% when placed under heavy consistent load. That negates to some degree the GPU performance of the 10 core unit although you’ll still have more cores available vs the base model. For video editing and other tasks that use the GPU in a more “bursty” fashion I’ve found it’ll run at full speed for about 3-5 minutes before it gets too warm.

Having used the Macbook Air M1 (and my Macbook Pro M1 Max) every day for the last two years I can say this M2 feels a bit zippier doing basic tasks. My benchmark tests indicate a nice speed bump in both single and multicore performance over the prior architecture but the M1’s found in the 14 and 16 inch pro models still have much better GPU performance.

Battery life remains exceptional – you’ll have a hard time not making it through the workday with this one. I have yet to get a low battery warning on mine – very similar to the M1 series in that regard.

The previous MacBook Airs suffered from a lack of ports – this one improves the situation slightly by adding a Magsafe 3 power connector that allows both of its thunderbolt/USB 4 ports to be used while plugged into power. The Magsafe connector terminates to a USB-C connector so it can be used with any Apple or compatible third party power supply.

The Thunderbolt ports are full service ports so they can also provide power to the laptop if you’re using a USB-C or Thunderbolt docking station. But this MacBook Air, like the previous one, only supports one external display. My 14″ Pro can support two 4k 60hz displays with a single thunderbolt connection by comparison.

Next up we’ll do some experiments with Parallels and see how the laptop performs running Windows 11 ARM and Linux distros.

All together this laptop is one of the few on the market that checks all the boxes: portability, performance, and battery life. This one will be right up there with some of Apple’s best laptops.