iPad Pro 10.5″

I won’t bore everyone with a lengthy review of the iPad Pro 10.5″. Reviews will be popping up everywhere as people get it, and some “big” sites got review units early.

Needless to say, the new iPad is fast. Like, really fast. I still haven’t decided yet if it is primarily just the increased refresh rate of the screen which makes things appear “faster” to the eye or what. But regardless of what it actually is, this iPad is fast.

The screen is great. True Tone, which is on the 9.7″ iPad Pro as well, is very nice. The slight size increase does actually make a lot of difference. After using various iPads for so many years, it’s nice to finally have one with a much smaller bezel.

As I said before, the new iPad is very fast, almost overkill right now though to be honest. iOS 11 will be more important than the latest hardware update. iOS 11 has the potential to really change how people use their iPads, especially with the newly beefed up hardware.

Logitech Slim Combo 10.5″

The Logitech Slim Combo is an alternative to the Apple branded keyboards with Smart Connector. It’s (slightly) cheaper, and includes a case which protects the actual iPad itself. My initial Hands On post can be found here, so I won’t repeat what I have already posted.

As shown above, the Slim Combo also includes a Pen holder, which is not available on the Apple set. The case is separate parts, so you don’t need to have the keyboard connected at all times. The keyboard is almost full size. The keys are spaced fairly close together, but if you are used to a chiclet style keyboard, getting used to it is not an issue. The backlit keys (shown below) are nice, but what I noticed is they dim off after about 3-4 seconds of not touching the keyboard. This is a feature to minimize battery drain of the iPad since the Smart Connector is what is powering the keyboard itself.

Final Notes

The iPad Pro 10.5″ is a beast. It’s fast, the screen is amazing, and from what I can tell so far the battery life is great too. But, it’s limited by iOS 10. I will write up a more detailed review once iOS 11 hits the public, which will also be after a few months of use with the iPad Pro. If you have a 9.7″ iPad Pro, I do not recommend upgrading to the new 10.5″. It’s just not worth it. But if you have an older iPad and are looking into something new, with Pen support, I see no reason not to buy it. If budget is a factor, look into buying the 9.7″ iPad Pro from stores such as Best Buy. They are selling them $150 off right now.

The Logitech Slim Combo is nice. I highly recommend it. Just make sure you have a specific use for the keyboard before spending so much money on a keyboard set though.  It’s highly responsive with little to no lag at all. The backlit keys are nice especially in low light situations. I honestly can’t wait to use this along side iOS 11 just to see how productive of a kit it actually becomes. Keep an eye out for more info here on the site.

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Overview

The new Logitech Slim Combo with detachable keyboard for the iPad Pro was just released when the new iPad Pro models were announced. The combo, along with the iPad Pro, both come in 10.5″ and 12.9″ sizes.

The Logitech Slim Combo is an ideal companion for your iPad Pro. It has a protective cover and detachable keyboard which supports 4 use modes (Typing, Viewing, FaceTime, and Reading) giving you amazing versatility. The Slim Combo features well spaced, backlit keys and a dedicated row of iOS shortcut keys. The keyboard pairs with iPad Pro in a click and never requires charging, due to the Smart Connector.

The keyboard uses only around 0.4-2.3% of iPad battery for an hour of typing. No charging needed.

Hands On

Sorry for the relatively low quality photos here. I wanted to get an initial hands on out quickly, so I took these last night when it was delivered.

As you can see the 10.5″ model is rigid. The palm rest at the bottom of the keyboard does not fold back like the larger Combo set, and I’m fairly happy about that. It seems to me that the foldable palm area would be more annoying than it is useful.

The entire keyboard is tapered to raise it slightly. The design seems well thought out, as with the whole keyboard tapered it does not flex much at all.

My initial hands on is positive for this set. The size is good, as is the overall build quality. It’s hard to say how well it will perform, but expect a post about that next week.

There are a few issues I can see with a keyboard set designed this way though. The Smart Connector is nice, in theory. It’s great to never have to charge the keyboard or increase weight with a battery. But, if you have the iPad in a vertical position there is no way you can keep the keyboard functional. Since it doesn’t pair with Bluetooth, or have a separate battery, it can’t function unless connected to the Smart Connector. Just keep that in mind if you are considering this set.

As I said earlier in the post, expect a full review once I actually have my iPad to test it out. Upon my initial hands on though, I wouldn’t hesitate to purchase this set if you are looking for a nice one at launch.

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The Redesign…

A lot goes in to relaunching a site. Content needs created obviously, but the behind the scenes work is the majority of the process. As you have noticed, I haven’t made any posts in the past month or so. It’s not that I don’t have anything to write about, that is never really the issue. The issue is the setup of how I want to publish the content to my site. I’m unsure of the direction I’d like to go with the site. It used to be hugely successful (from a personal point of view). I made much more ad revenue than the site cost to run. I had a fairly large community back when I had a forum. It was great. At one point I even had 3 people writing articles for the site. I’ve been holding off on the content until I get the general function of the site exactly how I want it. 

Time and Relevance

I had a massive backlog of content from the past 15 years or so on the site. That content still got traffic. As time went by, the frequency of traffic slowly dwindled. I understand how things you post online tend to be relevant for only so long. That’s why I decided to remove everything and start over. In some ways it’s great. No old information to waste time/space, but it also means I need to create more content, quite a bit more now that the archive of information is no longer here.

A New Year Ahead

Starting in 2017, the 15th anniversary of the site, I will pick up the pace. I will make posts regularly, along with a few friends who will help to provide more content for the site. So hang in there for now while I get everything configured and all the behind the scenes work done.

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First Thoughts…

The Amazon Tap is a well made device. The build quality is good. The packaging is some of the easiest to open that I’ve ever received. And, the initial setup is very easy.

Now into some details… Below is the “official” description of the product for those who don’t know exactly what the Tap is.

Product Overview

Initial Impressions

The Amazon Tap works fairly well for it’s intended purpose… a portable speaker. The sound quality is decent, though it’s not as good as the Amazon Echo, and definitely no comparison to a Sonos Play: 1. But, the whole point of the Tap is portability. The other devices aren’t.

Amazon claims the Tap lasts up to 9 hours on a single charge, which is nice. I haven’t had a chance to try and see how close to reality that is, but I am fairly certain that should be long enough for most people.

As mentioned in the intro, the packaging is as simple to open as possible. Included in the package is a charging cradle, a usb cable and a power adapter. The charging cradle is great. You just set the Tap on it and it charges. It doesn’t have to be positioned a certain way or anything.

The initial setup is simple. You just turn the Tap on, connect your phone to the temporary WIFI that is active during setup, and open the Alexa app on your smartphone. There you enter your home WIFI information and the Tap is then connected through your wireless network. While the Tap can be connected via Bluetooth as well, I prefer to use WIFI when at home. This way you don’t need to stay in a certain range of the Tap and streaming music services just play through the Tap itself and aren’t reliant on the phone.

Some people are worried about the “always listening” nature of the other Amazon devices such as the Echo and Echo Dot. With the Tap, this is not an issue. The device isn’t always “listening”. In order to talk to the device you have to tap the mic button on the front of the device. This has some ups and downs obviously. One positive is the fact that you don’t have to use the “Alexa” name to ask questions or give the device commands. You just tap the button and say what you want, but one drawback of that is having to be in close proximity to the device in order to use the feature.

The Alexa integration with devices just keeps growing and growing. I have various smart plugs through my house and one feature I like is being able to control them with my voice. I can just say “turn on the living room lights” and they come on. I seriously can’t wait to see how Sonos integrates with Alexa in the upcoming months. And, I’m patiently waiting for my Echo Dot pre-order to arrive later this month. (Expect a post about that as well.)

Conclusion

So, in conclusion, the first week or so that I’ve had the Tap has been a good one. I don’t regret buying the device, which sometimes happens when you buy electronics like this. The portability of the Tap is great. It’s just the right size to not seem too big to take places. The battery seems sufficient for my needs so far. And the sound is average, or sometimes slightly above average, quality. You have to remember, this isn’t a high end device.

I recommend buying the Tap when it is on sale like I did. $99 is a good price point for the device. The regular price of $129 seems a bit high to me, but it’s highly likely the Tap will be on sale quite often during this holiday buying season. If you can grab it for under $100 like I did, I think it’s worth considering.

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The SONOS Experience

Sonos speakers have been around for almost 15 years now. Usually I am quick to jump on new technology, but this is one example of something I waited to purchase. I have been using various Sonos speakers throughout my house (and my office) for almost 2 years now. A lot has changed over the past year in regards to the software and even hardware available from the company.

This is how Sonos defines itself:

Sonos speakers are beautifully designed to fill your entire home with music. Use one simple app to stream different tunes in different rooms. Or send one amazing song all through the house.

How I Became Hooked

Where to begin…

As mentioned above, a lot has changed with Sonos over the years. Until recently Sonos was limited to just a few speakers. In the past few years, they have introduced some new speakers and features to allow the “price of entry” to be lower than it was originally.

After the PLAY: 1 was introduced, I decided to finally give Sonos a shot. The price was reasonable and from what I had heard, the speaker sounded great for it’s relatively small size. I finally made the jump into the Sonos eco-system. I became instantly hooked. Luckily (or maybe unluckily?) for me, about a week later, some great deals came up with the Play: 3 range of speakers. So obviously I jumped on that, and the need for more just kept getting worse.

Over a span of a month or two, my Sonos speaker count rose quite a bit. Throughout my house I now have 5 Play:1 speakers, 2 Play:3 speakers and the Subwoofer. And for good measure, I have a Play:1 in my office as well.

The Experience…

Ever since purchasing the Sonos speakers I listen to music a lot. Much more than I did prior to purchasing them. With the availability of services now like Apple Music I can stream basically anything I want anywhere in my house. Either all together or separately in each room.

One good thing about a Sonos speaker is it’s ability to be moved around easily, or paired with other speakers of the same type. For example, I originally purchased a Play:1 for my bedroom. I thought I would use it more, but it turns out I was never listening to it in there. I realized I played music a lot more in the “Den” as it’s labeled in my Sonos system. So I created a stereo pair in there. I have to say, a stereo pair of Play:1 speakers is drastically better than a single Play: 1, and even better sounding than a single Play:3 speaker.

A feature addition that was added during the past year is Trueplay. Walls, furniture, where you position your speaker – they all impact the acoustics in a room, and the sound quality of your music.

Trueplay makes your Sonos speaker even smarter. It uses your iPhone or iPad to analyze the room, then literally adjusts how each woofer and tweeter produces sound.

So you hear the music you love, custom tuned to the room where you’re listening.

The change in quality is drastic after tuning your system in each room with Trueplay. I was actually very surprised. At first I thought it was going to just be some sort of gimmick, but really, it’s not.

Speaker Options

There are 3 main speakers to choose from, if you are using the Sonos system for music.

They also sell a soundbar and a few other devices, but I have no experience with those so I have left them out of my article.

As you can see, there are slight differences between the 3 models. For smaller rooms the Play:1 is more than sufficient. So if price is a limiting factor for you to make the jump into the Sonos eco-system, don’t be fooled by the need for the more expensive models.

Conclusion

If you have a large music collection, or even a small one but use one of the many streaming options available, Sonos speakers will greatly increase your listening. The ease of use is amazing, and the setup is as simple as could be. You can literally have it up and running in just a few minutes. Sonos also recently announced that in early 2017 they will include Alexa integration to add another dimension of speech enabled control to the system.

If you have any comments or questions regarding Sonos speakers, feel free to comment below and I will try my best to answer any questions you have.

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What is Sling TV?

For starters, it’s not that (sling)box people had years ago to stream their cable service other places. This is something totally different.

It’s a streaming cable service, sort of. After using it for a while though, I see it as more of an addition to your existing cable service, and not necessarily a replacement.

A lot has changed since the Sling TV service began. The most notable of which is the fact that you can do up to 3 streams at a time, unlike at launch where only 1 was available. Another major change is the addition of different plans, which I will talk about more later.

Initial Impressions

First off, I would like to say the experience varies greatly between what devices you use to view Sling TV.

The most “real television” like experience in my opinion is with the Roku brand of streaming hardware. I have tested it on both the Roku 2 and 3, and I can say the overall presentation is great on both. I have an Apple TV which isn’t new enough to get the Sling Channel. Only the latest model of Apple TV is compatible. I also used the Sling App on an Amazon Fire TV Stick. That was very disappointing. The wireless signal was much less reliable via the Fire TV stick compared to the Roku streaming device. The overall performance was of no comparison either. The Sling App on my iPad Air worked fine for the short time I have used it as well.

That being said, a Roku is my choice for the best (and fairly cheap) option for streaming.

Details

As I mentioned in the beginning of the article, Sling TV now has 3 main plan options.

These plans have 3 prices. $20, $25 and $40.

As you can see there are quite a few channels. The most notable difference between Orange and Blue is ESPN. Blue has many more channels than Orange, but does not come with ESPN. To me, that’s not a deal breaker, as Blue is the bigger bang for the buck, because I have FiOS also. I can use the Watch ESPN apps to view their content if I want. I also added News channels for $5. I got this primarily because I like to watch MSNBC. It is basically the main reason for even trying out Sling TV to be honest. I can watch MSNBC live via the FiOS website, but that is annoying. In fact, I can watch pretty much all of the channels that come with Sling in one way or another because of my Verizon FiOS subscription. Other $5 add-ons include Sports, Kids, Comedy, and Lifestyle. Various Premium Channel subscriptions are available as well.

So this brings up my next point….

Why Two Services?

Well, as I said at the very beginning, I consider Sling an add-on to normal television. Yes I have Verizon FiOS, and I love it. But… I don’t pay for boxes everywhere in my house. I don’t have a box in my basement, but I spend quite a bit of time down there because of exercise equipment. And I also don’t have a box upstairs in one of the offices in my house. As I said, I tend to watch MSNBC quite a bit, so Sling TV was the most user friendly avenue for streaming it. Another important factor which helped me to decide to subscribe to Sling is the fact that I could use it in my office at work as well. I have a small television there (but no cable service) and Sling had (and still has) a free Roku 2 offer going on. So I got a free Roku 2 for doing a 3 month prepaid service, That basically makes 2 months of the 3 free, so it was a great opportunity to give it a go.

Conclusion

If you don’t watch a ton of television, and the channels Sling offer fit what you enjoy watching I don’t see any reason why it couldn’t replace a traditional cable service. Just remember on demand is limited and some channels can get annoying due to the streaming aspect of the service. For example, MSNBC doesn’t show commercials but it plays the same music all day every day when there is a commercial break. That gets annoying quite fast.

Most channels included are available to stream from within their own channel apps, especially on the Roku. So if you already have an existing service such as I do and don’t care about having to switch between separate apps constantly you wouldn’t need to even consider getting something like Sling. Sling to me is more about ease of use than it is for me to get content I couldn’t view otherwise.

That all being said, I hope this helps to explain my experience with Sling Television so far.

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Wow, 2017 marks the 15th anniversary of StevoFC.com. It’s time to relaunch the website. I used to love running the site, but you know how life is. My goal is to make time to post at least a few times a week.

I am in the process of creating content for the site so hang in there for now and please visit back soon.

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