Stuff Magazine South Africa

You’ll see that part of this thicker-than-usual edition of Stuff is dedicated to things you can do when the lights are out. And why the lights are always out. And why they’ll continue to be out for a while. That’s because we created a standalone load

Are folding phones the future? Samsung seems to think so. Its third attempt at a foldable flagship doesn’t attempt to reinvent the bend: you get the same 6.2in display on the door, plus the same 7.6in screen when you flip it open – albeit brighter th

If you still haven’t hound what you’re looking for, Xiaomi is here to help… Xiaomi makes a lot of stuff you probably don’t know about. As well as its range of wallet-friendly smartphones you can also buy Xiaomi electric scooters, Xiaomi musical inst

That plumber really gets around, doesn’t he? He really does. And given that a typical day for Mario can include fighting Bowser, go-karting and playing golf (see p104 for more on that), he’d surely benefit from wearing a watch. If the plumber felt p

Ah, Lotus – the car brand that refuses to give up. Thought the Norfolk maker had checked out long ago? Fresh investment from China means it has a bright and majorly electrified future. But before we get to see a battery-powered Lotus SUV (yep, reall

More than a decade after the last Left 4 Dead, developer Turtle Rock is back to what it knows best: having a bloody good time surviving the zombie apocalypse with friends. Except in Back 4 Blood you’re not just survivors but Cleaners, veterans battli

With its deft exploration of religion, psychology and philosophy – not to mention huge robots punching aliens – Neon Genesis Evangelion was truly groundbreaking anime. You’ve probably devoured the original series and spin-off movies already, but this

Today’s phones are boring. Oh, how we miss the pre-smart days when Nokia, Motorola and Samsung were still experimenting. From circular keypads to slide-out screens, the wild west of phone design was, in today’s terms, a vibe. Enter the Galaxy Z Flip3

R42 300 (body only) / canon.co.za Putting all its metaphorical eggs in one basket, the Canon EOS R6 is a stunning camera that can tackle just about every subject you might wish to throw at it. It’s ideal for a plethora of different subjects, tacklin

R27 000 (body only) / sony.co.za The old cliche says you should never work with children or animals. But if it’s photographs you want and you’re holding a Sony A7C, there’s no reason to be afraid of either. Full-frame cameras don’t get much smaller

R117 000 (body only) / ormsdirect.co.za Ever since human beings have been committing images to cave walls, canvases and memory cards, we’ve been obsessed with our own stupid faces. And if you’re looking for something to continue that trend, the medi

Rtba / sony.co.za Stills and video cameras used to be very different beasts, but these days it can be hard to tell them apart. The big giveaway with Sony’s ZV-E10? The fluffy wind-muff that fits over the microphone and cuts down on noise made by th

R13 500 (body only) / amazon.com Panasonic’s G100 is aimed squarely at some of the worst people in the world: influencers. But while this 20.3MP Lumix might be most at home asking people to like and subscribe, it also has plenty of stills skills to

What’s the story? The Germans have a reputation for being sensible when it comes to hi-fi. Sennheiser is famed for engineering rigour, longevity and, most of all, performance – the flipside of that being a perceived lack of value for money and visua

R18 200 (body only) / ormsdirect.co.za When you’re buzzing around the streets taking snaps of day-to-day life, it’s important to look the part – and Nikon’s Z FC has style in spades. Taking design inspiration from the company’s classic FE 35mm came

from R1 366 000 / landrover.co.za We’ve previously tested Land Rover’s Defender 110 but the two-door Defender 90 is, if anything, an even better version of Landy’s latest. Maybe that’s because we’re not cramming in an entire family and enough suppli

What’s the story? Instant cameras are usually big beasts, so kudos to the design team who spent years trying to fit in all the minuscule components, Tetris-style, to create this teeny style icon. As the world’s smallest analogue instant camera, the

R4 700 / samsung.com/za Samsung’s new monitor is a touch confusing. It tries to be too many things at once. It does nothing well enough for anything to be considered a standout feature, leaving us at a loss to explain what it’s for. It is not a gami

R6 000 / ticwatch.co.za The TicWatch is a smartwatch made by Chinese brand Mobvoi that has taken its time to arrive in SA. Now that it’s here, is this plastic and stainless steel wristwear up to the task of making certain that you’re never away from

R3 000 / fitbit.co.za In a bid to make the sexiest Fitbit imaginable, the Luxe is designed for those who want style with their stats. It’s a bracelet-inspired fitness tracker with five-day battery life… but is somewhat lacking when it comes to stuff

R4 000 / gear4u.co.za If Marvel movies, Chris Pratt and Kumail Nanjiani have taught us anything, it’s that anyone can have a better body if you throw enough trainers and money at it. Sadly not all of us have Disney’s money, or that mouse threatening

R2 200 / koodoo.co.za Unsurprisingly for a sub-R2 500 headset, the Pulse 3D is all-plastic with pleather earpads. It doesn’t feel cheap, though, and isn’t particularly heavy. We can’t say for sure that it’ll stand the test of time, but with no boom m

André de Ruyter is the most important businessman in South Africa today. If the Eskom CEO can’t deal with its debt, its notorious inefficiency and the load-shedding problems, the whole country will suffer. It wasn’t helped by an explosion in Medupi i

While this MTN-branded mobile router isn’t going to set your wireless world on fire, it’s an incredibly solid MiFi offering. The Hisense H220M is a 4G LTE MiFi router that’s simple and effective. It sports a 2 000mAh battery, meaning it can outlast e

When you talk about coal in South Africa, it’s always best to start with some maths. And history. And geology. And then, of course, there is politics. The geology is complicated because the time period involved runs into billions of years, and since

It looks like you don’t have to stock up on bricks if you’re a pizza fundi with a craving for woodfired pizzas in your humble abode. These days, almost every archaic cooking method has a new high-tech replacement (case in point: the air fryer). It lo

If South Africa presents an ambitious and credible emissions-reduction plan to the world at the COP 26 climate meeting in November, it could get access to cheap capital for a large-scale investment programme aimed at stimulating and ‘greening’ the ec

Eskom, as we know, is too big to fail. The consequences are enormous for the country, its sovereign debt, its credit ratings (they still matter) and the whole economy. But what if you could turn Eskom’s iniquitous State Capture debt and the need to u

South Africa’s coal addiction is becoming costlier and increasingly risky as the world shuns the dirtiest fossil fuel. The product of plant matter compressed for millions of years, coal has played a central role in South Africa’s economy since it wa

Rtba / vivo.com/za Despite doing big things in China for the best part of a decade, Vivo isn’t quite a household name in South Africa yet – but phones like the video-centric X60 Pro could be about to change that. With a gimbal-aided snapper that uses

Remember when a cloud was a puffy floating thing in the sky? Now, when we say cloud, we mean cloud-computing. But the word “cloud” is so much more than computing, it is an entirely new way of doing, well, everything. Cloud is not just the way we run

R4 100 / nuraphone.com Whether you think true wireless in-ear headphones are liberating or a recipe for “NOOO, NOT THE STORM DRAIN!” mishaps, they’re everywhere – and the latest brand to join the revolution is Nura. As with the interconnected NuraLoo

Twenty years ago, in those sepia-tinted days when CDs ruled the Earth and musicians could still make a living from their records, the idea of having instant access to almost every song ever recorded would have seemed like science-fiction. Even when S

Any tablet 7in or larger will do but Samsung’s affordable 10.4in slice of metal and glass has 32GB of onboard storage and a huge 7 040mAh battery. These are the only numbers that matter if you’re heading into the world of digital comic books but ther

The blunt tool Do Not Disturb now has a more refined sibling, Focus, which blocks out distractions in a way that’s context-specific. For each Focus you can define a schedule, people and apps who can notify you, and home screens you want to hide. You

Skyward Sword gets plenty of hate these days, as a release of the late Wii era when most people had got over motion controls. Many argue it hasn’t aged well compared to the great Breath of the Wild. Well, they’re wrong. Forget your prejudice against

Mario has never been short of hobbies, but when he wants to unwind after an arduous princess rescue mission he just loves golf. This Switch debut is a welcome entry in the long-running series, and it’s fair to say its various interpretations of the s

Brain-punk is just one of many silly-sounding terms coined in Scarlet Nexus. This is a sci-fi future where people’s minds have awakened to new psionic powers, just in time to protect humanity against a terrifying brain-eating alien species called Oth

from R5 000 / samsung.com/za Given how much you’re paying, the Samsung Galaxy A32 is a snazzy little handheld. While it obviously cuts back on some of the more luxurious features belonging to its beefier siblings, we can’t help but appreciate its 9

from R15 000 / istore.co.za The iPhone 12 is a monumental smartphone. While it may not look like much of an upgrade from last year’s iPhone 11, the new A14 Bionic chipset means the iPhone 12 is one of the fastest devices on the market. It now also

from R23 000 (13in) / istore.co.za If you thought the spec bump of the 2019 MacBook Pro was worth your time, then the 2020 version will astonish you. There’s nothing as powerful as Apple’s new M1 processor which runs 2.8x faster than the last model

from R50 000 / lg.com/za LG’s OLED TVs are consistently impressive and the G1, the company’s newest super-slim television, is no exception. It’s ‘merely’ 4K but at just 20mm thick it’s also ideal for sticking on your wall. Which might be why you ne

from R8 000 / istore.co.za The Apple Watch Series 6 is the next step forward for all you fashionable fitness junkies. It improves on the Series 5 in every way, enhancing what was already the best smartwatch on the market. With a capacity of 32GB, a

R1 150 / evetech.co.za It’s rare that one encounters a microphone this small that works so well. The new Razer Seiren is the microphone for anyone who spends plenty of hours talking at the computer and doesn’t want a clunky mic hanging over their

R36 500 / ormsdirect.co.za The Fuji X-T4 might be the high-end mirrorless camera of your dreams. Relatively affordable for a flagship, it excels at stills and video thanks to in-body image stabilisation, high-speed shooting and 4K recording at up

R16 800 / istore.co.za With the Air 2, DJI has built on the basic platform of a simple entry-level drone and thrown in a heap of pro-grade features, so those dipping a tentative toe into the waters of aerial photography or videography no longer ha

R11 000 / ryobi.co.za Possibly the most popular and reliable home generator out there. So popular, in fact, that when load shedding sticks around for long enough it becomes a little hard to find on shelves. This Ryobi powerhouse puts out up to 6 9

R4 000 / takealot.com Look, the Sonos Roam isn’t the very best speaker you’re going to encounter at this price point, but it’s certainly one of the most skilled. Integrating with your other Sonos kit but equally capable on its own, the Roam loves

R200 for 200 / mrphome.com What else did you expect at the top of a candles top ten? You just can’t beat the bog-standard tealight candle. Affordability, aesthetic appeal, burn-time, wax make-up, convenience, sheer sodding volume… the standard tea

R1 370 / PS5 This PS5 exclusive is compared to the best that Pixar and DreamWorks can field, and with good reason. The rip-roaring tale that scoots players around the galaxy (back and forth through the titular rifts) looks every inch as good as pr

Wow, IBM. Has Stuff been taken over by suits? What next: “Why spreadsheets are fantastic”? Sure, ‘IBM PC’ might evoke people doing dull things in dull offices, rather than the cool things people do with computers today. But this was 1981. IBM’s debu