Gadget Review: Mikey Digital external microphone for iPhone/ iPad

Review by Rob P. 

Why do you need an external microphone for your iThing? Well, if you’re an average user, you probably don’t. But if you’re a journalist, researcher, musician, student or podcaster, the Mikey Digital might just be the gadget for you.

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Gadget Review: WD My Book for use with the Wii U

Review by Matt S.

As the name of the website should make obvious, we do a lot of downloading here at Digitally Downloaded, and the Christmas period is the most busy of all. With the size of the games getting ever larger, space to store everything has become an increasing challenge.

This is moreso with the Wii U than any other console. The console only came with 32GB of space, meaning that a couple of Virtual Console games and, say, Deus Ex, will alone fill the internal hard drive. So when I grabbed the WD My Book, my immediate thought was to turn it into the Wii U's "real" storage drive.

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Gadget review: Scosche RHYTHM

Review by Rob P.

Ouch. Over the course of the last week I’ve cycled up hills, climbed stairs and lifted weights. I’ve run for miles and walked for several more. I’ve even been to the gym. Who would have guessed that gadget testing could be so painful?

The cause of this anguish is the Scosche RHYTHM, an app-based heart-rate monitor for iOS and Android. It’s a little different to your average fitness gadget: here, a moisture-resistant pulse sensor is worn on the forearm and the analysis work is done via a Bluetooth connection to your phone or iPod. It’s a setup that’s less constricting than a traditional chest-strap, and it allows a few simple controls to be housed in the sensor itself. These don’t go much further than a status LED, an on/off switch and controls for your music player, but it’s a comfortable arrangement that makes everything accessible when you need it.

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Gadget review: WD My Cloud

Review by Matt S. 

In the last couple of years "the Cloud" has gone from a marketing term for something that technology vendors have tried to sell to big corporations to something that everyone understands. Thanks to Sony offering players the ability to keep their game saves safe even if their console dies courtesy of the PSPlus Cloud, to handy tools such as Dropbox, and the likes of Microsoft and Google offering word processors and spreadsheets online via "Drives" people now understand what Clouds are and do.

But setting up your own Cloud? That's something a bit new, and it's exactly what Western Digital is offering with the My Cloud storage drives. In concept Network Attached Storage (NAS) at consumer prices is not something new, but a NAS drive that lets mums, dads, and goldfish to set up an manage a personal cloud is something that I haven't really come across before.

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Hardware review: the Xbox One

Review by Nick H. 

After plenty of build-up over the last half year, both the PlayStation 4 and the Xbox One have finally released. We took a look at the PlayStation 4 last week, and you can see our review of it here. Now that we have had a chance to put the Xbox One through its paces, it is time to share those early impressions.

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Gadget review: Divoom Onbeat-200

Review by Rob P.

Do you own a Bluetooth speaker? If not, I confidently predict that you’ll have one by Christmas. They’re this year’s seasonal gadget of choice, and they vary from pocket-sized gizmos to full hi-fi replacements. The Divoom Onbeat-200 falls somewhere in the middle: it’s mid-price, mid-spec and mid-performance. But there’s one area in which it has few equals: for its size, this thing is LOUD.

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