Another year in review. Can’t believe I’ve been writing these since 2008 – my end of year summary of the tech toys, gadgets and major expenses we’ve had in the year! This will be a pretty long list, in part because of the number of gadgets I picked up for the Maldives trip in the middle of this year.
Samyang AF 35mm f1.4 FE – Win: at f1.4, the fastest lens I’ve yet acquired for the Sony FE system but a fairly huge lens for a prime for me to bring along in my bag all the time. The lens didn’t see a lot of use as a result – so I’ll have to really step-up in 2020 and consciously put this lens on the A73 to get more mileage out from it.
Creative SXFI Air – Win: one of two pairs of SXFI headphones I bought – this one was for home use, and the other is to play back music on my smartphone. The SXFI headphones use headphone holography to produce immersive audio, and while it’ll never be quite like what you’d get with true surround sound speakers, there’s indeed a real audible difference when the technology is enabled. The immersive audio also sounds better with audio tracks from films and the like compared to music, but that might be a matter of equalizer settings.
Casio PX870 – Win: a dream purchase for me – as it finally provided a chance for me to record on the piano! I’ve recorded close to 60 or so pieces across my favorite modern day musicians, including Yiruma, David Lanz, Jim Brickman and Yukie Nishimura – and will be continuing to do more in the coming year.
HP x2 G2 Pro 612 – Mixed: lovely hybrid tablet I bought for cheap as this was a factory refurbished unit. I’ll probably pass this laptop to Hannah in the coming year for her to use as the laptop is fine for normal productivity use, but not for image nor video processing work that I do when I’m traveling.
Olympus TG-5 – Mixed: picked up for a very specific use-case: taking underwater photos during the mid-year Maldives trip. The ability to take pictures in RAW is extremely important, as it allowed me to fix the bunch of color balance issues typical when shooting in the water. Outside that trip though, I haven’t finally used this camera much anymore, so I might sell it away this year.
GoPro Hero Black 7 – Win: the second purchase for the Maldives trip, and the marine life videos recorded on this GoPro on that trip alone made the purchase of this little device worth it. Sample video from our Maldives trip below. There are interesting head to head comparisons between this device and the DJI Osmo Pocket and testing to see which offers better video stabilization. The DJI is easier to handle and less finicky, but the GoPro also has the additional advantage of being weather-proof.
Insta360 One X – Mixed: the third gadget I bought for Maldives, but it only saw some limited use during the trip. There were just too many gadgets in the bag! In this coming year, I might get Hannah to takeover video recording duties when we’re on vacation so that I can concentrate on photography and also really start using this 360 camera.
Oppo Reno 10x Zoom – Win: picked up for free after Singtel gave me a whole bunch of discounts and the like when I opted to renew my corporate phone-plan with them. The phone’s notch-less and almost bezel-less screen is a beauty, and I finally was able to live with its FHD+ screen, coming out of the QHD+ screens on the Samsung Note 9 I had before that. The video stabilization is less effective and also the camera doesn’t record in RAW, so those were major sacrifices when I switched phones, but it was more/less a free phone, so can’t complain!
Sony FE 28mm f2.0 – Win: my favorite prime lens of this year. Shoots sufficiently wide, and fairly fast at f2.0 even. And the lens is compact enough for it to be mounted on the A73 and still fit into a small camera bag. The lens went up Fukouka Tower for the golden-hour photography in September this year.
Ecovacs Deebot Ozmo 900 Robot Vacuum Cleaner – Win: our daily driver at home to clean-up the house. The cleaner is sometimes temperamental and forgets where it is, unfortunately also resetting a carefully setup map of the house occasionally too. But it’s otherwise full-featured, cleans well, and easier to maintain than the iLife A6 Smart Robotic Vacuum Cleaner it replaced.
MiPad 4 – Mixed: an Android 7.9″ tablet I picked up for cheap, to tinker with, and in part also to evaluate some of the Android applications and software my students develop. It’s not a good enough replacement for my venerable Apple iPad Mini 4 though – when is the fruit company going to put out a real replacement for the Mini 4?!
DJI Osmo Pocket – Win: my favorite device of 2019. Records mechanically stabilized 4K 60fps video, decent battery life, charges quickly over USB-C, and I used it extensively for the two Japan trips and also in Shanghai all this year. The Osmo Pocket doesn’t record in H.265 unfortunately, making its recorded video files pretty large, and its gyroscope very occasionally also gets confused, turning its video upside-down. It happens very rarely – perhaps just one video in every 100 files I record and can be fixed in post-processing – but it sure is annoying nonetheless.
Olympus E-PL9 – Win: ostensibly intended as an alternative for the Canon G7X II to take family wefies for the December Japan trip, but the G7X II turned out to still be a better shooter for that use-case than the E-PL9. Still, the m4/3 system is just a lot of fun to use for casual photography.
Tamron 28-75mm f2.8 Di III RXD – Win: my last big purchase of 2019, and only because the lens filter on my Sony FE 24-105mm f4 cracked and got stuck. The lens is as sharp as the Sony FE and is at f2.8 to boot – but its focal length range isn’t as wide nor long, so nope – the Sony FE 24-105mm f4 will still be my go-to lens when I travel.
That’s a wrap for 2019: didn’t expect to buy this many gadgets this year! I might sell some of these items this coming year if I can’t figure out a persistent use for them.
Recent comments