Stuff UK

Hello and welcome! Whatever headphones you use, chances are you feel pretty strongly about what’s good about them… and what’s not so good about them. Well, we’ve taken that theme and looked at 36 of the very finest pairs in our cover feature this issue. Whatever your desires for aural pleasure, we’ve got options for you: there are over-ears for sitting at home, true wireless in-ears where ultimate portability doesn’t have to mean substandard sound, and fitness buds in case what you really want to do is look better at the gym or pound out the training miles. Elsewhere we’ve looked at the latest in VR, including giving our definitive verdict on Sony’s new PSVR2 headset for the PS5 as well as the Meta Quest Pro, the most advanced goggles…

Peer inside most watches and you’d see a bunch of impossibly tiny cogs and springs, or a load of boring old circuitry – but open the hinged 1.43in AMOLED screen on Huawei’s latest smartwatch and you’ll find something much more useful: a pair of Bluetooth earphones. Smaller than usual in order to fit inside the stainless steel case, the bullet-style buds offer a modest 3hr battery life with the ANC turned on, but they still have tap controls and will auto-pause your tunes when you take them out. A leather strap clamps the timekeeper to your wrist, which allows the sensors underneath to monitor your heart rate and SpO2. It also has an accelerometer and a gyroscope, with Huawei’s HarmonyOS 3.0 able to track over 80 different exercises and activities…

It’s been nearly a century since a trip to Alan Blumlein’s local cinema gave the English engineer the idea for stereo sound – and while most of us have moved on from playing thick shellac records on the Edison phonographs of the early 20th century, two-channel audio remains the dominant format for playing back tunes. But maybe not for much longer. The six drivers inside the new Sonos Era 300 all point in different directions – two woofers and two tweeters are angled left and right, another tweeter points forwards, and a fourth aims upwards to reflect sound off the ceiling – meaning you can use it to listen to spatial audio. Right now, it only supports Dolby Atmos via Amazon Music Unlimited, but you can also pair two Eras…

People often bang on about how fast cheetahs are, but if we had to back any beast in an all-animal-kingdom drag race it would be the peregrine falcon. It’s been clocked diving through the skies at speeds of almost 250mph, so no wonder the three speedy 50MP snappers on the back of Honor’s Magic5 Pro are named after this rapid little raptor. The phone’s Millisecond Falcon Capture algorithm is designed to speed up focus time and shutter speed, so you can capture sharp shots of fast-moving subjects – although the 3.5x optical zoom is nothing compared to a falcon’s eyes, which can pick out prey from nearly two miles away. But you won’t find a 6.81in OLED screen on the bird, especially not one with 2848x1312 resolution, a 120Hz refresh…

In James Bond’s line of work a red dot usually means you’re on the wrong end of a sniper’s scope, but when it comes to cameras it’s a much more promising sign. As well as Leica’s own familiar branding, this limited-edition D-Lux also has the 007 logo etched into the top plate, while the cap covering the 24-75mm lens mimics the films’ famous gun-barrel opening sequence. Operation is fully manual, so you adjust the f1.7-2.8 aperture using a control ring on the lens barrel, and tweak the exposure value and shutter speed using dials on the top plate. An EVF viewfinder is built in for selecting your target, or you can use the touchscreen display on the back. Underneath the textured covering it’s the same as a regular D-Lux 7,…

If you thought it took a long time to get through Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movies, wait till you sit down to build this 6167-piece model of Middle-earth’s most famous Elven stronghold. It’s not clear whether the 18+ on the box is an age rating or how many hours it’ll take to construct, but when finished it measures 39cm tall, 75cm across and 50cm deep, with 15 minifigs – including Frodo, Gandalf, Aragorn and Legolas – to guard its three sections. The first includes Elrond’s study, Frodo’s bedroom and The Council Ring, with its ring of chairs and the plinth where the ring is first revealed; the second is the Elven tower, complete with five grey minifig statues of famous warriors past; and the final one features a…