Tuesday, February 24, 2015

News: Pebble Time on Kickstarter

Source: Kickstarter


If you remember how much we loved the original Pebble from our earlier review, it should come as no surprise that we are excited to eventually get our hands on the newly announced Pebble Time on Kickstarter. The Pebble Time sports a color e-ink display with 7 day battery life.

The Kickstarter for the Pebble time showed up earlier today with a $500,000 goal by March 24, 2015. Within 24 hours, it has far exceeded that goal and is currently around $7.7M as of this writing. Apparently, this has set a bunch of new Kickstarter records.

What makes the Pebble so appealing is it's use on both popular mobile platforms, iOS and Android. The longer battery life of 7 days requires less charge time compared to its competitors which see 1-2 at most. We'll see how it fares against the almighty Apple Watch which is due in April.

We'll keep you posted with a review down the road!

Tuesday, February 10, 2015

Review: iClever IC-BTH01 Lightweight Wireless Bluetooth Headphones

Today we will be reviewing the iClever IC-BTH01 Lightweight Wireless Bluetooth Headphones.


I will begin by saying I'm a sucker for headphones and have many lying around the house and office. Fortunately, I have a job where I can listen to my music a majority of the day and decided this is the best way to put headphones through their paces. 

The headphones were incredibly easy to pair with my iPhone 6 Plus, in fact, so easy that all there is to say is that they just work the way you would expect, and that's good. Throughout my workday I made a few occasional calls homes and listened to about 3 hours of music (I had several meetings) and the rest was idle. At the end of the day I still had about half a charge left on the headphones as reported from my iPhone.

The only real complaint I have is the shortness of the cable between the earbuds. This makes it somewhat difficult to use behind the head (in front just looks silly). This directly affects the other small issue I have which is it makes the microphone sit a bit behind where I would like. This was apparent when making calls because my wife had a hard time hearing what I was saying.

I usually prefer over-the-ear headphones over ear buds due to comfort for long listening sessions, but I have to admit that these were comfortable enough for a couple hours of use before getting a little uncomfortable which is better than expected.

The sound quality was on par with what I expected. All the ranges were there and the bass was not over bearing which is a trend in headphones these days, so I was glad to hear that they aren't trying to knock your ear drums out. They sounds good over several genres from classical to rock.

Pros
  • Great battery life.
  • Easy connectivity and use.
  • Good sound.
  • Easy and quick charge.
  • Comes with extra sized ear buds.
  • Good quality build.
  • Flat cabling for easy storage.
  • Decent price.
Neutral
  • This is more of a preference thing, but I would have liked skip buttons on the controls.
  • Not the comfiest of headphones, but definitely good for longer sessions than most ear buds.
Cons
  • Short cable makes it somewhat difficult to use behind the head.
  • Microphone made it somewhat difficult to hear for those I was talking to, this is mostly due to where it rests due to the shortness of the cable.
Overall, these are a great set of headphones and a great step up from the packages Apple headphones. They are a great value and I would recommend them for anyone looking for a decent budget bluetooth set of headphones.