Stuff UK Xmas 2021

Hello, and welcome to this full-to-the-brim issue of Stuff – one that marks our 25th anniversary. And that’s why this magazine comes with a fantastic celebratory supplement looking back at the best gadgets of Stuff’s first quarter-century. The main mag is packed full of present ideas, since it’s also time for the annual Stuff Christmas spectacular: our top gifts for anybody who loves tech, from gaming nuts to movie buffs, fitness fiends to retro fanatics. And it’s not all super-expensive: we’ve included plenty of great gadgety ideas on a budget. There’s plenty to gawp at in our Hot Stuff section, while reviews include the super-powerful new MacBook Pro from Apple, the latest in a long line of good stock in noise-cancelling headphones from Bose, Fitbit’s newest Charge tracker and Google’s well-priced flagship…

U-turns are all the rage these days, particularly if you’re the UK government, but it seems the trend has now reached Apple HQ too. Having first introduced the Touch Bar to the MacBook Pro in 2016 it’s now given it the chop, with the standard row of function keys back in its place above the QWERTY – and yes, MagSafe charging has also returned. That’s not to say the new Pro is a total throwback, though, with Apple’s latest M1 Pro processor being up to 70% faster than last year’s M1 chip (which was already crazy-speedy). You also have the option of an even zippier M1 Max version with a 10-core CPU and 32-core graphics, claimed to be powerful enough for editing 30 simultaneous streams of 4K ProRes video in Final…

Ever since Kyocera put a 0.11MP snapper in its VP-210 in 1999, people have talked about camera phones… but Sony’s Xperia Pro-I is the first that could be considered more camera than phone. It features a 1in Exmor sensor – usually reserved for premium compacts such as Sony’s £1200 RX100 VII, which uses an identical one – with 315 phase-detect AF points, dual apertures (f2.0 and f4.0) for dynamic depth-of-field control, and three focal lengths (16mm, 24mm and 50mm) to cover all photographic bases. It’s a video star too, capable of shooting 4K at 120fps, and running the show is a Snapdragon 888 processor. Paired with 12GB of RAM, that should be plenty powerful enough to handle that Exmor sensor’s 12-bit RAW files. What toll all that will take on its 4500mAh battery…

For as long as smartphone cameras have been taking brilliant, balanced, vibrant photos, camera manufacturers have been battling against the idea that their products could eventually be redundant. Nikon’s bold new strategy is to take the fight to the enemy – by fitting out its new mirrorless flagship with the kind of photographic sorcery that phone cams have been pushing for years. Aimed at pro shooters who require high speeds and high resolutions, the Z9 has a 45.7MP full-frame backside-illuminated CMOS sensor – its ‘stacked’ construction enabling super-fast computational speeds. It has advanced AI-assisted AF and even an electronic shutter so it can shoot silently… y’know, like a phone. It looks nothing like a phone, though: built from magnesium alloy with that deep Nikon ergonomic grip, it’s weatherproof and will work down…

Portals are supposed to transport you to other places, but what if you want a Portal that you can transport around with you? Rather than being tethered to the telly or plugged into the wall, Facebook’s Portal Go has a built-in handle and battery, so you can log some all-important facetime with Uncle Len in Lanzarote from the comfort of the lounge, or hide the pain of the weekly catch-up with the in-laws by doing it while you chop onions in the kitchen. With a 10.1in 1280x800 touchscreen plus two 5W full-range speakers and a 20W woofer built into its fairly chunky frame, the Portal Go isn’t the kind of thing you’d want to take to the pub, but the battery should last for 5hrs of one-to-one video before it needs…

The first Raspberry Pi sparked a revolution in computing, harking back to a forgotten era of experimentation – and for less than the cost of a round of Jägerbombs. Various Pis have come and gone, but one of the most notable has been the tiny Pi Zero, which doubled down on affordability but was still capable enough to sit at the heart of countless electronics projects. Now the Pi Zero 2 W has arrived to pinch its thunder. This fresh take on the Pi Zero is a less powerful module than the current flagship Pi, but the new quad-core 64-bit ARM Cortex-A53 CPU, clocked at 1GHz, gives the dinky computer 40% more single-threaded performance than the standard Zero – and a whopping 5x more multi-threaded grunt. The board retains plenty of connectivity…