Welcome to another edition of the Week in Review – and what a week it’s been! Much of the team has been over in Berlin covering the huge IFA 2022 tech show – the largest in Europe – and bringing us some of the year’s biggest and most exciting tech launches, a couple of which I’ll highlight below.
It's been a busy few days, and I’m looking forward to my Friday evening, when I’m going to crack open a beer and settle down to watch the first two episodes of Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power on Prime Video. As a big Tolkien fan, I’ve been looking forward to it for a while.
I hope you all have suitably relaxing (and elf-filled) weekends, and enjoy this week’s newsletter. If you have any thoughts on the topics featured, or want to let me know what you’d like to see in future editions, please send me an email, making sure to include 'NEWSLETTER' in the subject line.
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Our own mock-up of what we think GoPro Hero 11 Black will look like (Future)
GoPro is the king of action cams. If you’re looking for a camera to slap on your helmet, bike or drone (or pretty much anywhere else), to capture exciting footage, then you’re likely to have considered a GoPro at some point.
But, as our cameras editor Mark Wilson points out, while other tech such as cameras, phones and laptops, have evolved over the years, action cams seem to be stuck in a bit of a rut – and the latest GoPro Hero 11 Black leak hints that the next flagship action cam from the brand will look, well, pretty much exactly the same as the GoPro Hero 10 Black.
While there’s a school of thought that suggests if it isn’t broken, don’t fix it – and we did praise the Hero 10 Black’s design when we reviewed it – it’s still a bit disappointing. Sure, there’s only so much you can do with the design of an action cam, as they need to be small, light and robust so you can use them in punishing conditions… but generation after generation of small black boxes is getting a bit dull, especially when other products are increasingly appearing with more experimental designs.
The Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold Gen 2 was on show at IFA (Future)
One theme I’ve definitely picked up at IFA 2022 is the rise of foldable tech. Sure, we’ve had foldable phones for a while now (and while I’m still not entirely sold on them, the new Samsung Galaxy Z Fold 4 shows they’re no longer the easily-breakable gimmick they once were), and in Berlin we’ve seen a foldable OLED TV from LG that also doubles as a gaming monitor, and new foldable laptops from Lenovo and Asus.
“Wait a minute…” I imagine you all thinking while reading this, “Aren’t all laptops foldable?!”. Well, my astute imaginary friends, that’s true. But while traditional laptops are made of a separate screen and body attached by a hinge, these new foldable laptops are one giant screen that can be folded in half.
The thinking behind such devices seems solid enough – you can use them as a huge tablet, or as a big screen with an external wireless keyboard, and then fold them to carry around easily, and use like a laptop.
But I’m a bit wary, to be honest. First, I prefer to type on a physical keyboard, especially for long screeds such as this fine newsletter. Secondly, these laptops are going to be expensive – the Asus Zenbook 17 Fold OLED will start at $3,499 / £3,299, while the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold Gen 2 will launch at a slightly more sensible (but still outrageous) $2,499 (around £2,220). For that kind of money you could get an extremely powerful gaming laptop, or a couple of new MacBook Airs.
Hopefully these expensive early models will make way for more affordable future devices, as we’ve seen with smartphones. Our Computing Editor Christian Guyton is in Berlin, and he’s tried both out, so check out his hands-on reviews of the Asus Zenbook 17 Fold OLED and the Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Fold Gen 2 for his thoughts.
POLL QUESTION:
What new piece of foldable tech would you like to see?
Logitech is hoping to emulate the success of Valve's Steam Deck with a handheld of its own (Valve)
I really love my Steam Deck, the handheld console that’s actually a compact PC, and which lets me play my Steam library games from pretty much anywhere – as the father to a young child, it’s allowed me to play games more easily.
Perhaps the best thing about the Steam Deck is that it’s inspired other device makers to attempt their own takes on the form factor; you no longer have to be a company named Nintendo to make a successful handheld.
Logitech is one such manufacturer. However, while many reporters – including our own Callum Bains – compare the Logitech handheld to the Steam Deck, that isn’t quite right. While the Steam Deck is a powerful handheld that’s heavy and expensive, but can play games natively, the Logitech handheld will be much less powerful, and will instead stream games over the internet from services such as Xbox Cloud Gaming and Nvidia GeForce Now.
That’s quite an important distinction, as it means the games may look great and run really well, but that’s very much dependent on the quality of your internet connection. You wouldn’t be able to use this to play Spider-Man Remastered on a plane, as I did with my Steam Deck.
Still, it’s great to see another handheld gaming device coming out, and I’ve been impressed with game streaming services in the past – I just don’t think it’ll make me abandon my Steam Deck any time soon.
Morfydd Clark stars in Amazon's The Rings of Power (Matt Grace / Prime Video)
As I mentioned at the start of this newsletter, I’m a big Tolkien fan. My dad read the Hobbit to me when I was a kid, and when I was older I read the Lord of the Rings. When Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings movie trilogy came out, I absolutely adored all three films (though the less said about the Hobbit movies the better).
I’ve even read Tolkien’s dense Silmarillion (less a novel, and more a history of Middle Earth), so I’ve been super-excited about watching Amazon’s lavish The Rings of Power TV series – said to be the most expensive show ever made.
Elsewhere at IFA, our US Editor-in-Chief, Lance Ulanoff, got his hands… well, not on, but in, the new Huawei Watch D.
While smartwatches have all kinds of health sensors for monitoring your heart rate, pulse, stress levels and more, the Huawei Watch D goes even further by including a small pump that applies pressure to your wrist to measure your blood pressure – when you have your blood pressure taken by a doctor or nurse they wrap a band around your arm that gradually tightens, and that’s kind of what the Watch D does.
That might not sound particularly pleasant, but if you’ve got a condition that means you need to keep an eye on your blood pressure, then this device could be a huge help – and it could potentially even save your life.
I don’t think we’ll see this feature on every new smartwatch going forward, but as wearable tech that puts health monitoring at the forefront, Huawei’s implementation here could be a real trailblazer.
JBL's new Tour Pro 2 true wireless earbuds (Future)
IFA 2022 really has spoiled us with exciting tech, and I love the sound of JBL’s Tour Pro 2 earbuds, which our own Becky Scarrott spied at the show.
Like most buds, they come in a charging case which keeps the earbuds protected and their batteries topped up as well – but what caught Becky’s attention was the fact that the charging case of the Tour Pro 2 comes with a touchscreen which allows you to check the battery levels of the earbuds, control your music, and even check your messages.
It may seem like a small feature, but it’s a really great innovation, and one which Becky reckons could be a game changer – and I’m inclined to agree.
You'll need to look carefully, but the "near-perfect" Einstein ring is in the center of this image captured by NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (Spaceguy44)
While GoPro cameras may not feel too ambitious these days, there’s one sort-of camera that’s blowing minds on a weekly basis: the James Webb Space Telescope. Okay, it’s technically a telescope (the clue’s in the name), but it’s been taking some stunningly detailed shots of deep space, and giving us a glimpse of celestial phenomena we’ve never seen before.
Its latest achievement was to snap what our sister website Live Science calls “a perfect shot of an Einstein ring”. What’s an Einstein Ring, you may ask? Well, according to Live Science, it’s a halo of light that’s caused by “a distant galaxy passing through warped space-time surrounding another galaxy aligned between the distant light source and Earth”.
That sounds pretty awesome, and the photo itself certainly looks cool, if a little small – although in fairness this thing is really far away.
The Sign Off
That’s it from me for this week – I’m shattered, and I want to go home and unwind in front of some high-budget fantasy TV. IFA 2022 has been a blast, with lots of exciting announcements, but I’ll also be very glad to have most of the team back next week – just in time for an exciting Apple event on Wednesday, at which we're expecting to see the iPhone 14.
Have a great weekend, and don’t forget to email me!.
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