Agggghhh – another year, and time to do another year-end review of the major purchasing and activity decision points we’ve made this year, amidst more white hair on the head and eyesight that gets incrementally poorer every year LOL. We’ve had quite a large number of new toys and equipment pick-ups this year, and I’m expecting expenditure for new gear next year to not nearly be as high as this year’s. So, in no particular order of significance or importance:
Surface Pro 2017 – Mixed: deciding that this one was a ‘mixed’ wasn’t easy – the device in terms of design and performance is significantly improved from the Surface Pro 3 that I was coming from – but the X1 Carbon that I picked up last year has pulled double duty: it’s not only a great work productivity machine, it’s also a better device for me to bring along on holiday: the X1’s faster processor and all-round better performance makes it easier to do photo and video editing on the move. Still, Hannah enjoys using the Surface Pro, and the double styluses I now have for this Microsoft hybrid makes it also a great child-engagement tool at home.
Samsung Gear Sport – Win: I was a little uncertain at the point of purchase if I’d like this watch more than the superb Huawei Watch that I was using prior to this one, but a year of use later, I’m sold: the Gear Sport was the best all-round smartwatch I’ve used so far for almost all of 2018.. until the Huawei Watch GT came along. Samsung’s Tizen OS is rock-solid stable – Android Wear frequently crashed on both of my previous Android watches – the Sport’s Super AMOLED display is lovely, and the rotating bezel a really novel way of interacting with the device. The roughly 1.5 day battery still isn’t fantastic, but it’s sufficient for me to get through a workday at least – though I’d need to take it off the wrist before I go to bed for a recharge in order for me to use it the next day. The new Galaxy Wear watches improves on several aspects of the Gear Sport – including battery life – but didn’t otherwise offer significant enough upgrades to me otherwise for me to upgrade the Gear Sport to the Galaxy Watch.
Google Home – Win: and because this device is a great child minder, and with none of the health-related risks associated with letting kids run amok with mobile gadgets. The kids have got Google Home to tell bedtime stories, play word games with them – Hannah’s now a big fan of Mad Libs – sing them songs, and play music of course. In contrast, my use of the Home is limited only to having it set alarms and time counters, and play the occasional music tracks from Spotify!
iLIFE A6 Smart Robotic Vacuum Cleaner – Win: though this device has its own little idiosyncracies. It doesn’t sense oncoming obstacles reliably – Ling is a little unnerved each time it collides into furniture at home – and there’s no discernible pattern to the way it cleans floors: it’s totally random. Still, the device picks up human and guinea pig hair around the house effortlessly, and is fairly easy to do daily maintenance of it too, though deep cleaning of its mechanical parts is also more labor intensive. We got this at a bargain bin price, so can’t complain too much finally. Now that I’m convinced on this class of device’s utility, I reckon my next robot cleaner after this A6 breaks down will be a model that has some sort of intelligence to do room mappings and retain memory when discovering the best cleaning patterns.
Acer Swift 3 SF315 – Win: Ling’s replacement laptop for her 3 year old HP Pavilion – which didn’t age gracefully. There are horror stories abound of Acer’s laptops from friends and colleagues, but there’s no denying their great price-points and decent specs, and in the case of the Swift 3, an actually attractive design too.
Sony A7 III – Win: by far and after including the requisite lens picks-up, changing from a m4/3 to a full-frame camera system this year has been the singularly most expensive purchasing decision I’ve made in a while. The cost outlay was about SGD8,652 for the camera body, seven lenses, two flash units, and a third party grip – ouch – though also finally less when I also include the proceeds from selling away half of my m4/3s gear: including the much-loved Olympus E-M5, Panasonic GX85, the Olympus 12-50mm and 45mm f1.8, the Panasonic 25mm f1.4, and finally the Meike MK320. The largest benefits that the A73 has brought with it include Eye-AF (though getting the exact focusing point can still be a hit and miss thing), incredible battery life, and that I can now shoot at ISO6,400 without hesitation, and ISO12,800 too if I do some careful cleaning-up in Lightroom. On the other hand, the entire system is also heavier and bulkier than the m4/3 though still less so than the Nikon DSLRs I was using earlier on, and the 5-axis stabilization on the A73 doesn’t seem as effective as the one on the E-M1. And the thin depth of field on full-frame sensors also means I’ve had to be more deliberate in configuring specific settings for selected types of pictures.
Changing my camera system from m4/3 to Sony FE has been a major expenditure activity this year, but thankfully I’m all set-up now and don’t expect to spend very much on this new system next year.Lenses – Win: … somewhat. I’ve avoided the high-brow GM line of Sony lenses given how expensive they are, and have largely made do with the cheaper variants. The native lenses I’ve picked up this year are all superb: the Samyang 35mm f2.8, Sony FE 50mm f1.8, Song FE 85mm f1.8, Sony FE 16-35mm f4, and finally the Sony FE 24-105mm f4 – the latter of which is my principal lens not only for vacations but also for general purpose photography. On the other hand, the adapted lenses with the Sigma MC-11 haven’t seen as much use: Tamron 70-200mm f2.8, nor the dirt cheap Sigma 70-300mm f/4-5.6.
Amazfit Bip – Win: … though a marginal one at that. For normal use, I still far prefer the Gear Sport than the Bip, but the Bip’s Energizer Bunny-like battery life allows this little smart watch to be truly a wear and forget device. The watch is that much lighter than the Gear Sport, and excepting the absence of a counter to track the number of floors I walk up, can pretty much do everything I need the Gear Sport to do, albeit less fluidly. The Bip was bought for a very specific use-case: for our semi-long Taiwan vacation but it got succeeded by the Huawei Watch GT less than a day before we actually left for the trip. Still, the watch gets credit for getting so much right at its extremely low price-point.
Samsung Note 9 – Win: in terms of shape/form and usability, an incremental upgrade to what I was coming from – the superb Samsung S8+ – but with slightly better longevity by way of its beefier battery, a technically larger screen (but no you can’t really tell the difference in actual use), and the always useful and now upgraded stylus that also doubles up as a remote controller. The largest bonus of the Note 9 though was in its support for stabilized 4K video, 60fps if I need it, and also a far more efficient video codec that really reduces the storage footprint of 4K video. And I got it at a much lower street-price than what the normally eye-watering price this phone costs.
Huawei Watch GT – Win: My last major purchase of 2018, and the third smartwatch I bought in the year – ouch! This watch is a game-changer… almost. Up till the point of its announcement in Oct this year, smartwatches equipped with OLED-type screens running one of the main operating systems simply could not last for more than a couple of days per battery charge. The Watch GT changes that through its clever dual-processor design; its battery that can now last a fortnight under normal use. Huawei’s proprietary operating system though isn’t nearly as fluid or full-featured as the ones from Apple, Google, or Samsung. But if you’re primarily using the smartwatch for fitness and health tracking, and are fine with basic smartphone functionality, there’s no better smartwatch now than the Huawei Watch GT. And it’s relatively affordable to boot too.
That’s a wrap for 2018!
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