Novation Circuit

Roli BLOCKS let you build your own modular music studio. With the Lightpad BLOCK at its heart, you can tap it, stroke it, hard or soft to create sounds and beats for your next track. It features a 15×15 LED matrix with 5D Touch capability on the silicone surface allowing you to sequence, loop, and finger drum with expressive control. Being modular, you can connect more BLOCKS giving you even better control over your music. The Roli Lightpad BLOCK is pocket-sized at 94mm x 94mm and connects to your iPhone or iPad through Bluetooth so you can make music on the go with the free Roli NOISE app (iOS) or other third party apps. If you’re into making music on something a little bigger, it also connects with any desktop app that supports multidimensional polyphonic expression (MPE).

Splash-proof, wireless, and up to 10 hours of music playtime with an interactive light show. The LED lights may seem like a gimmick, but that quickly dissolves into an appreciation of mesmerising ambience while you listen to your favourite tracks. The award winning JBL Pulse 2 also lets you capture the colour light you want to see using the colour-detecting prism on the front. Simply it at the colour you want; be it a wall, t-shirt, or pet, press the button and watch it glow. Accompanied with two 45mm transducer woofers, you’ll literally feel the bass as this speaker pumps, and aside from great sound, you can connect up to three Bluetooth devices allowing you and couple of others to take turns playing the music. The JBL Pulse 2 also has a built-in microphone making it perfect for talking to Siri if it’s connected to your phone, or hosting conference calls if you’re into that sort of thing.

Fashionable, sleek, and sexy are not the usual words you associate with a hard drive. Redefining the aesthetics of portable storage, Western Digital have given their My Passport range a facelift with a beautiful new look in a range of colours. Available in 6 colours, black, white, orange, blue, yellow, and red, and starts at 1TB (1024GB) going up to a whopping 4TB of storage capacity. They’re also blazing fast with USB 3.0. You’ll only need one, but you’ll want them all.

Founded in 2010, The Vortexgear company set out to improve the craftsmanship of keyboards and change their dull image into a piece of equipment to be proud of. The Vortexgear KBC Pok3r has done just that. This mechanical keyboard is 60% the size of a full width keyboard, has a metal casing and PBT keycaps sitting on your choice of Cherry MX switches, giving you control over key pressure and click loudness. The keycaps are easily interchangeable if you want to upgrade it with new colours or change the QWERTY layout to DVORAK or COLEMAK. The Pok3r Mechanical Keyboard has three programmable layers on top of it’s default keyboard layer, meaning you can set different functions to different keys up to three times. At the press of a button you can switch from the default typing keyboard to one set up for your gaming rig, or one for your development environment, or even one that’ll type your most commonly typed phrases or email addresses with a single click.

A box of nostalgia that you can plug directly into your TV’s HDMI port. Young or old, the Nintendo Classic Mini lets you relive your childhood memories, or make new ones in glorious High Definition 8-bit magic. Fitting in the palm of your hand, this mini console comes with 30 NES games built in. Game like PAC-MAN, Donkey Kong, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Kirby’s Adventure and of course Super Mario Bros. If unlike me, you have friends, you may want to buy an extra NES Controller as only one is supplied.

The Anker Powercore 10000 is smaller than a deck of cards, and that’s impressive because this portable charger can provide over three charges to your iPhone 7. Perfect if you’re not going to be near a plug socket for a while (or if you’re overdoing it a bit on Pokémon Go…). Not only will you have 10,000mAh of power in your pocket, but it also has High-Speed Charging using Anker’s exclusive PowerIQ and VoltageBoost which gives you the fastest possible charge for any device.

The DJI Mavic Pro is a remotely controlled drone that records stabilised video in 4K, has a range of over 4 miles, a flight time just shy of half an hour, it weighs just 743 grams and folds down to smaller than 20cm at it’s longest side. It’s also one of the sexiest drones out there, but there’s more to this beast… It’s FlightAutonomy system giving it the smarts for precise hovering and avoiding obstacles with help from it’s 5 cameras, GPS + GLONASS (Global Navigation Satellite System to you and me), 2 ultrasonic range finders, redundant sensors and 24 computing cores. Let’s talk about speed. With FlightAutonomy it goes up to 22mph while avoiding obstacles. Not fast enough? Sport Mode gives you speeds of up to 40mph. Not bad for something you can throw in your backpack.

The highly anticipated update to Apple’s MacBook Pro line has finally come. It’s been a wait since it’s last iteration but look what goodies they’ve been working on; most notably the OLED Touch Bar with Touch ID that sits just above the keyboard. The Touch Bar dynamically changes display depending on the application you’re using giving you a whole new set of tools helping you navigate around quicker. It’ll also let you pay for things just like you can with the Touch ID on the iPhone. Very nice. 130% faster graphics, up to 10 hours of battery life, 100% faster flash storage, and it features the most colourful and brightest Mac notebook display ever (you can quote them on that, I just did). There’s also better speakers, a trackpad that’s up to 2x bigger… that’s huge. Unlike the iPhone 7, it still has a 3.5mm audio jack, but it does lack all the ports we’re used to like USB, HDMI, SD Card slot, MagSafe charge and has instead opted for Thunderbolt 3 ports that support USB-C. It comes in Silver and Space Grey.

You may know this console by it’s rumoured name the Nintendo NX. Available to buy in March 2017, this console bridges the gap between a stay-at-home console and an out-and-about gaming machine. The beauty of Nintendo is its inclusiveness. Other consoles have evolved to rely heavily on network multiplayer gaming rather than the old-school style of actually being in the same room. The Nintendo Switch is keeping this tradition alive with it’s modular controller that can be taken apart and be used as two controls so you can bust out a game of Mario Karts with your mates in the park.

Voice recognition technology has taken great strides in understanding exactly what you want. The Amazon Echo Dot will be your new best friend. Ask Alexa to play music, read the news, set alarms, search for information online, and best of all, it let’s you tap in to any smart devices you have installed around your home. “Alexa, turn off the lights and remind me to go to the gym in the morning.”