Stuff UK December 2021

welcome

Hello! I’m new here. But enough of that – welcome to what is a superb issue of Stuff (if we do say so ourselves), where we look in depth at the year’s biggest handheld, the Nintendo Switch OLED. Not only that, but you also get the full skinny on the next generation of mobile gaming hardware set to hit the streets in our tasty main feature. We’ve also reviewed all the new Apple gear in the form of the iPhone 13 Pro and super iPad Mini, plus the cream of Windows 11 laptops now that Microsoft has released the latest version of its mildly successful operating system. And there’s more tip-top new tech from Amazon, Sky, Xiaomi, Philips, Hasselblad, Bowers & Wilkins and many, many more. Next issue is set to be…

so long and thanks for all the dish

When you think about it, screwing a metal dish to the outside of your house just so you can have Modern Family beamed into your living room from space is a little bit ridiculous. So don’t bother. Sky Glass, which is available in 43in, 55in and 65in screen sizes and five different colours, ditches the dish and the box, streaming everything over Wi-Fi instead; all you need to do is plug in the power cable. It’s chunkier than a lot of tellies, mainly because there’s a built-in Dolby Atmos speaker system that uses six drivers for room-filling sound – so you can probably chuck your soundbar too. Those with bogus broadband might need to explore an upgrade, because the 4K HDR Quantum Dot display means you’ll want to be streaming as many…

public surface broad tasking

Buying an iPad these days is a bit like booking a flight with Easyjet – there are all kinds of optional extras you need to add to really get the best out of it. But the Surface Laptop Studio comes ready for action right out of the box, with a proper keyboard and a 14.4in tilting touchscreen that lets you effortlessly switch formats for the task at hand. In laptop mode you get a clever Precision Haptic Touchpad; pull the screen forward to hide the QWERTY and it becomes a kind of digital easel (or the perfect setup for watching films on the train thanks to Dolby Vision support); while folding it flat gives you a rather hefty tablet, with 120hz PixelSense Flow tech making it a dream to draw on…

here comes the leak friend

Google isn’t very good at keeping secrets, which is less than ideal for a company that knows more about you than your own mother… but at least it only tends to give away its own. So while everybody knew the Pixel 6 Pro was coming (and even what it looked like) long before it was officially unveiled in full, that doesn’t make it any less exciting. The biggest news is round the back, where you’ll find three cameras: a 50MP main, a 12MP ultrawide and a 48MP telephoto with 4x optical zoom. When their powers combine you get 20x zoom, but as usual it’s Google’s computational wizardry that’s likely to impress the most: a new Magic Eraser automatically removes unsightly objects and people from your shots – handy if you ever…

trundle of joy

Alexa has been helping out around the house since 2014, but there’s only so much a disembodied voice can actually do for you before you start craving something a little more, well, robotic. Clear a path for Astro, then: basically Alexa on wheels with a 10in tablet for a face. Let Astro loose in your home and you’ll have a roving bot that’s always on hand to respond to your usual Alexa queries and will follow you around while you use it to make video calls or listen to music. It can even ferry stuff about in the storage bin on its back, identifying individual faces to make sure it’s delivering its cargo to the right person. You can set out-of-bounds areas that Astro will avoid, and there’s also a button…

flowing out in style

Virtual reality is great, but when it comes to the vast majority of headsets – which tend to be enormous and often tethered to a PC – the only reality you can leave behind is the one in your living room. What if you could fight futuristic pirates, or nip off for a meditation in space, while you’re sitting in an airport departure lounge? This is, we think, the idea behind the Vive Flow, the latest VR headset from HTC… although, as you can see, it isn’t really a headset at all. Its maker would rather you call it ‘lightweight immersive glasses’, apparently weighing little more than a chocolate bar and sporting a dual-hinge design with soft face gasket that allows it to fold down to a backpack-able size. As you can…