Ausdom ANC7 Noise-Cancelling Headphones

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Excellent noise-cancelling headphones

I was sent these noise-cancelling headphones without charge for review, and I think they are excellent.  They are very well made, the noise-cancellation is very effective and the sound is very impressive.

The headphones come very nicely packaged; inside you get a good quality hard carry case, a standard mini-USB charging lead, a jack-to-jack lead and a good set of instructions in decent English. The design is very nice, I think, and functionally they are excellent. They are light and very comfortable in use, with on/off, volume + and - buttons which double up as pause/play and skip forward and back. They also serve as the standard phone controls you would expect and all work well, as does the built-in microphone. The headphones have a decent grip but don't feel too tight and, with the very good padding on the earcups and headband, I find them comfortable for several hours use.

Bluetooth pairing is simple (standard pairing, by the way - they do not have NFC), I found the range good with no loss of signal up to about 10 metres and battery life seems very good. The wired connection via the jack lead works well (meaning that you can use the headphones in passive mode if you're out of battery charge) and I notice no difference in sound quality between the two modes.

Sound quality is very good indeed. I find the sound extremely well balanced; it's less bass-heavy than some, but the bass is there if you need it or give it an equalizer boost, and middles are strong and resonant which makes them excellent for rock, pop and the like. The treble is excellent, too, being bright and clear but not at all screechy, and the articulation is crystal-clear.  I have listened to a lot of music through these headphones, including my Test Tracks list which goes from 16^th Century choral music to London Grammar.   Everything sounds very good to me. Chamber, orchestral and large choral works are clear and distinct with a lovely full sound, and things like classic rock - the Rolling Stones' Gimme Shelter, for example - sounds great and the deep, rolling bass in London Grammar's Hey Now (one of my standard tests of headphones) is all there. Volume goes plenty loud enough for me with no audible distortion.

The active noise-cancelling is very effective, taking out nearly all of the background noise of the world.  There's a slight deadening of the treble if you listen to music with ANC turned on, but it's a very small effect and the sound is still very good.

In summary, these are excellent headphones. They are functional, stylish and comfortable and the sound is excellent. If you're looking for a good set of noise-cancelling headphones with both Bluetooth and wired connection, I can warmly recommend these.

Amazon.co.uk page HERE

iRULU Walknbook 2Pro 11.6" notebook

Rating 5/5

Review:
A very good notebook

I was kindly sent this Windows 10 notebook for my objective review. I think it is very good.

The packaging is a nice, sturdy cardboard box in which you get the tablet itself, the keyboard/cover, a mains charger, and a micro-USB lead. There's also a manual which is OK as a quickstart guide to Windows 10 but no use at all as a guide to the notebook itself. Fortunately, most things are pretty intuitive but I could have done with more help in finding things like the keyboard switch (of which more later).

The notebook itself is very good. It is robustly made, elegant (although the top is rather cluttered with logos) and I find it very good to use. The screen is very nice to my eyes: it's bright with good, true colours and has a good tolerance of viewing angle. It has Bluetooth (which is very solid), 2 USB ports (and handles a hub fine) and 3.5mm jack output. Set-up was simple (after a bit of a wait for Widows to update itself), wi-fi connection was easy and remains solid, and syncing with my accounts was quick and trouble-free.

In use, I find it excellent. It boots pretty quickly and programs run without any delays. Bear in mind that I am in late middle age and I don't game or use social media, but for all my usage it's excellent. Word processing, spreadsheets and so on (using LibreOffice), web browsing, TV and video streaming, email and music are all excellent.

I very much like the 360-degree hinge, which means that you can use it like a tablet and stand, with the keyboard as a rear-facing base. There is a little switch by the volume and power buttons which turns the keyboard on and off, so you can have it on your lap without a lot of spurious typing appearing. Obviously, you can use it as a touch-screen tablet like this.

Some specs are a little basic and in particular the cameras aren't great (0.3mp front and 2mp rear), but the tablet performs very well for what I need. 2GB RAM is fine, and it's pretty quick. The memory is only 32GB, but I've added a 32GB card which works fine and is adequate for my needs. (It will take up to 128GB.) Battery life is around 5 hours with my usage which is enough for me. The speakers are pretty good for a tablet (which isn't saying much, I know) and through headphones or an external speaker the sound is excellent, both wired and via Bluetooth.

Overall, I think this is a very good tablet/notebook. It's robust and well made and it works very well for me. I can't comment on very high-use multitasking or gaming, for example, and it won't take the most brilliant photos, but for normal everyday use I can warmly recommend this notebook. It's a good product which I enjoy using.

EFOSHM Noise-cancelling headphones

Rating: 4/5

Review: 
Good in many ways but lacking some features

I was sent these headphones without charge for review. They are comforatble and the active noise-cancelling works well, but I do have reservations about them.

The headphones are very well made and accessorized. They come in a nice hard carry-case with a jack-lead, a micro-USB lead, a ¼" jack adaptor and airplane adaptor, all of which are very good quality with gold plated plugs and robust build. The headphones themselves are of similar build quality: they are robust and well made with pivoting earcups for comfort and easy storage and a good, strong adjustable headband. The padding is good and I find them very comfortable.

To use noise-cancelling the headphones require two AAA batteries (not supplied). It is effective; even quite strong background whines and rumbles are completely silenced, while sudden noises and voices are audible but comfortably quiet. The volume control is a wheel design which works very well.

The sound quality is good without being spectacular. There is a very good bass kick, but without noise-cancelling I find it a bit muffled and bass-dominated. However, with noise-cancelling on it is far better. Trebles and middles are brighter and richer, while the bass remains strong. I test all audio products with a playlist which starts with 16th century choral music and ends with London Grammar's Hey Now (an excellent test of articulation and bass response); I don't find them great for classical music but rock and the like are very good with the noise-cancelling switched on.

At this price I do think it's disappointing that these have no Bluetooth and especially that there is no internal battery. Rechargeable batteries work fine (I've tried them) but an internal battery would be far better.

Given all this, I've ended up with a rating of 3.5 stars which I've rounded up to four because the headphones are solidly made and comfortable and the sound is definitely four star rather than three, but these come with a rather qualified recommendation.

I3C Card Reader

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A good, flexible card reader

I was sent this card reader without charge for review, and I think it is good. It's a little expensive for a card reader, but it is good quality and very versatile.

The most important thing to say is that it works very well. It's plug-and-play and it just does the job without any fuss. Transfer speeds seem very good to me – there's no difference between this and the dedicated card slot on my laptop, for example. It has plugs to fit USB and Apple ports, and also a slide-out plug for a micro-USB port for use with an Android phone or tablet, for example. I've tested it and it works very well, so it's a handy way of getting files from a PC to a phone if you need to.

The reader is well made and seems very robust, so if you need a flexible card reader which will connect to a variety of devices, I can recommend this. It's good.

Meyoung robot vacuum cleaner

Rating: 4/5

Review:
A good robot vacuum cleaner

I was sent this robot vacuum cleaner without charge for review.  I like it, although it does have some limitations.

The cleaner itself is a neat thing about 35cm (14") in diameter which looks smart - and rather cute in operation.  It seems solidly made and durable; I will edit this review if I experience any reliability problems but I'm not really expecting any.  It is nicely boxed and comes with a good remote control (you will need to supply two of your own AAA batteries) and a disappointing instruction manual.  It's adequate but for a significant purchase like this I'd expect something more thorough and in better English.  Nevertheless, I managed OK.

In use the cleaner is good.  It works fine on hard floors and shortish carpets - ours are all standard cut carpets and it copes well with them.  It does a decent job of cleaning; it makes random movements and passes across the floor, often going over the same place several times but it does get everywhere in the end.  (You can see it in action in the video with this review.)  The cleaner has two rotating brushes which gather dust and dirt toward the main roller-brush, which acts like a normal vacuum cleaner.  The dust tray is smallish but adequate for a decent-sized room and easy to empty, and the whole thing is pretty simple to operate.

It's possible to programme it to clean automatically at a set time each day (when you're out at work, for example), and it will find its way back to the docking station when the battery is low.  You can also press a button on the remote to send it home, where it will dock and charge automatically, as long as the dock is firmly fixed to the wall.

It is best suited to hard floors, I think.  The cleaning is decent, but it's not a substitute for a good vacuum cleaner on carpet.  It gets the bits up well and leaves things looking nice, but it doesn't really get the dust and grime from the depths of the carpet – our Dyson got a lot more muck out after I'd used this cleaner.  It also leaves a fair amount of stuff along the edges where the main rotating brush can't reach, so I'd say it was more for keeping things looking OK between your real vacuums.  The same goes for the mopping function, so I'm afraid this won't mean that you never have to clean a floor or carpet again.

A couple of other problems emerged:

- We have old, uneven floorboards in our Victorian building and the cleaner did get stuck on some of the more pronounced ridges.

- Long hair can be a problem because it wraps itself around the roller-brush and causes the machine to stop.  It tells you what's wrong with an error message and you can cut the hair off, but if you're leaving it on automatic, it might be an annoyance.

Overall, this is a good unit for low-effort maintenance between proper cleans.  It won't provide a complete cleaning solution but it will keep your place reasonably dust- and bit-free while you do something else and I can recommend it.

Gelindo Pruning Shears

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Very good pruning shears

Gelindo kindly sent me a pair of these pruning shears/secateurs without charge for review and I think they are very good.  The shears are plainly very well made: they are solid and robust and should last for years – and they have a lifetime guarantee.  I have some other Gelindo products which are all of very high quality and I have confidence in what they make.

In use, they are excellent.  Do read the instructions first!  I know you wouldn't expect to have to do that with pruning shears, but these have a clever ratchet mechanism which cuts thick branches by stages, making it much easier and you just need to know what to expect.  (The instructions are clear and in excellent English, by the way.)  They are a pleasure to use – comfortable, sharp and extremely easy to handle.  The claims are true – they really do cut quite thick branches pretty easily, and as ordinary secateurs they make very short work of trimming small stuff.

There's not a massive amount more to say about pruning shears.  In short, these are very good quality and excellent in use.  I can recommend them very warmly.

Mudder Kitchen Timer/Clock

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A very good kitchen timer

This digital clock and timer was sent to me for review, and I like it very much. It is clear, simple and solidly made.

The timer is larger than most at about 8cm x 6cm, which gives a large, very clear display. It has a fold-out stand and a magnet to stick it to the fridge or similar, but doesn't have a clip – which makes sense because it's a bit big to clip comfortably to a pocket. The grey surround is of a rubbery material which provides excellent protection from knock and drops (which happen quite a lot in a busy kitchen like mine) and it seems very solid and robust; I'd expect this to last for years.

The timer takes a single AAA battery (not supplied) and is very simple to operate. The buttons on the top work easily and it will time in hours, minutes and seconds – the first timer I have come across like this. Most are hours/minutes or minutes/seconds and I like the flexibility this brings. It has a good, loud alarm and will count both down and up. It also works as a clock; there is a button to toggle between clock and timer modes.

I short, I think this is a great timer. It works very simply and reliably, I like the large size, the clock function and the flexibility of the hours, minutes and seconds setting. At under seven quid at the time of writing I think it represents very good value, too, and I can recommend this very warmly.

Gelindo Kitchen Shears

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Excellent kitchen shears

These kitchen shears were sent to me without charge for my unbiased review, and my unbiased view is that they are excellent.  They are well made and extremely effective.

These are heavy-duty kitchen shears, which means that they are more like secateurs than scissors in build.  They work perfectly well as scissors and will cut anything including thin paper, but they're large, quite heavy and sprung so they open automatically which means they're best suited to what they are designed for – cutting tough foods like meat joints, bones and the like.  They do this very well indeed; a joint or bone placed in the hollow in the lower blade is sliced incredibly easily, and the whole thing just works very well.

The shears are very well made from good quality stainless steel and have the feel of a very durable item – they carry a lifetime warranty and I'd expect these to last for many years even with the regular use they will get in my kitchen.  I will update this review if I have any problems, but I'm not expecting any.  I have a Gelindo garlic press which is excellent and still looks and works like new after nine months of incessant use, so they make a good product. 

In short, these are excellent kitchen shears which you can buy with confidence.  Warmly recommended.

AIBI Women's Waterproof Silver Case Watch (Model: 51101-1)

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A very good quality, stylish watc

This watch was sent to me for review.  It is billed as a women's watch and would probably be suitable, but it has a 4cm face which I think many women may find a bit large. However, if the size does suit you I think it is excellent.  It is plainly a high-quality product and it looks very stylish indeed.

The watch comes in a very nice, hinged presentation box, and first impressions are excellent.  The dial is very nice: smart, simple and very clear.  The watch itself is very slim, and with the 4cm-diameter face I think this gives it a real quality, sophisticated air.  The band is very good quality, plain black leather with a discreet logo on the buckle to match the watch.  The whole thing just looks really good, I think, and I would be happy to wear this to a smart event as well as liking it very much for everyday wear.

Functionally, it's very good.  There is a clear date display and a second hand and the whole thing has an air of simple elegance.  It seems to keep very good time.  It is rated as water resistant up to 3 atmospheres; I can't vouch for this and it's plainly not intended for submersion, but it's good to know that it will stand up well to the sort of wettings it might get in normal use.  It seems very robust and well-made, so I would expect it to last very well.

I like this watch very much.  My taste is for a simple but classy-looking watch and I think this delivers that at a very reasonable price.  If you like the same sort of thing and want a date display and second hand this will suit you very well, I think.  I can recommend it very warmly.

iGadgitz - NC-600 noise cancelling headphones

Rating: 5/5

Review:
Excellent noise-cancelling headphones

I was sent these iGadgitz NC-600 headphones for review and I am very impressed.  They are well made, the sound quality is excellent and the active noise-cancelling works very well.

The first thing to say is that I was genuinely surprised by how good the sound is.  I have tested a lot of headphones and these are definitely among the best I have found in this price range – in fact they sound significantly more expensive to me.  The sound is excellently balanced with strong, resonant bass and middles which makes them excellent for rock, pop and the like. I also find the treble very good.  It's perfectly OK in normal mode but, oddly, gets a significant boost when the Noise Cancelling is switched on, which I think improves the sound significantly.   I have listened to a lot of music through these headphones, including my Test Tracks list, which gives all aspects of the sound a thorough trial. It starts with 16th Century choral music, it ends with London Grammar and it has most things in between, and everything sounds very good to me. Chamber, orchestral and large choral works are clear and distinct with a lovely full sound, and things like classic rock sound great and the deep, rolling bass in London Grammar's Hey Now (one of my standard tests of headphones) really resonates. Volume goes plenty loud enough for me with no audible distortion and they're just really good to listen to.

The active noise cancelling works very well; it does genuinely cancel out most of the world's general hubbub like traffic noise or the background noise on a train or aeroplane, although loud voices, single loud noises and the like are still audible.  This is a really handy feature for me and I like it very much.

The headphones come nicely packaged, with a very nice hard carry-case, standard mini-USB charging lead, a jack-to-jack lead and a good set of instructions in pretty decent English. The design is very nice and functionally they are excellent. They are light and very comfortable in use, with on/off and volume + and - buttons on the left earcup and pause/play and skip forward and back on the other. These also serve as the standard phone controls you would expect and all work well, as does the built-in microphone. On the right earcup is the active noise cancelling switch and an additional volume wheel control.  All work very well.  There is good padding on the earcups and headband, I find them comfortable for several hours use.

The headphones have both Bluetooth and wired connectivity.  Bluetooth pairing is simple (standard pairing, by the way - they do not have NFC), I found the range good with no loss of signal up to about 8 metres and battery life is good. The wired connection via the jack lead is also very good and I notice no difference in sound quality between the two modes. The headphones work in wired mode without having to be switched on, so if you do run out of charge it's a handy fallback.
 
I think these are excellent headphones, especially at this price. They are functional, stylish and comfortable, the sound is very good and the active noise cancellation works very well. These seem to me to be a real bargain at this price and I can recommend them very warmly.

SunrisePro bamboo book stand

Rating: 5/5

Review:
A very good book stand

This book stand was sent to me for review and I am impressed with it.  It is practical, well-made and looks very nice.

The stand is made from bamboo, which has a very nice look and feel to it.  It is plainly a robust and durable thing – which is just as well, because it's going to get a lot of use in my kitchen with all the drops, knocks and splashes which that implies.  (If I have any durability problems I will update this review, but 'm not expecting any.)  It looks really good, I think, with simple, pleasing lines and it's a nice thing to have around.  I can't vouch for the wondrous properties of bamboo claimed here, but it is a very sustainable resource so the claims of eco-friendliness do ring true.

Practically, it is excellent.  It folds flat to a thickness of about 2cm for storage and has three angles for supporting a book, tablet or the like.  Two fold-up flanges hold the book on the page you want, and it's big enough to deal with a large, thick cookbook, but will also deal with a paperback.  I've used it for cookbooks and also for reading novels, my Kindle and using a tablet.  It's a very practical object.

In short, I'm very pleased with this stand.  I'll be using it a lot and I can recommend it warmly.