GoPro Hero4 Session

Tuesday Toys

Life
GoPro Hero4 Session

7 July 2015

 

BBC micro:bit

The BBC’s micro:bit is a tiny single board PC aimed a school children. At 5x4cm, the micro:bit is about half the size of a Raspberry Pi, but with two push-buttons and a grid of 25 LEDs as its main user interface, the device perhaps appears to have more in common with the MITS Altair 8800.
BBC micro:bitThere is more to the micro:bit than there appears, however. The board holds an accelerometer, a compass, a Bluetooth interface, a Cortex M0 ARM processor from Freescale Semiconductor, an edge connector and three terminals to which wires can easily be attached with those staples of the physics classroom, croc clips and banana plugs.
Power is provided either from a detachable AAA battery pack (early designs called for an onboard coin-cell battery holder) or through a Micro USB connector, which can also be used to program the device.
The micro:bit ships with drivers onboard for the various peripherals and code to display characters one at a time on the LED grid, register button presses or detect when the device is in freefall. Microsoft’s TouchDevelop online programming environment, hosted at microbit.co.uk, will let children assemble these blocks of code to perform more complex functions and download their program from a PC to the micro:bit. JavaScript, Python, C++ and the visual programming language Blocks can also be used.

Price: tbc

GoPro Hero4 Session

GoPro’s Hero4 Session action cam is 40% lighter and 50% smaller than the previous flagship Hero4 Black. Nor are its discounts thwarted by cumbersome housing because the Session’s naked GoPro Hero4 Sessionbody is waterproof to 10 metres.
It has only one actionable button and approximately 180 settings, and yet its shooting modes have been streamlined into a ‘grab and go’ selection.
How the button is pressed determines the shooting mode. A short press powers the camera and automatically starts recording a Full HD video, whereas a long press turns it on and starts an 8MP timelapse video.
The battery is large enough to record for two hours and has an integrated battery. When it’s not recording, it’s not on and it’s not using any power.
Additional shooting modes include 1080p@60fps, 720p@100fps and 1440p@30fps.
Granular settings can be tweaked from the standard GoPro app, and although new mounts have been introduced, it will work with GoPro’s existing range of accessories.
The Hero4 Session is the only camera in GoPro’s range to be waterproof without a protective casing; a feature formerly reserved for Sony’s hero action camera, the X1000V.
It comes bundled with two mounts; one of which anchors the camera from the side for improved low profile shots.

Price: $399

Acer Liquid Jade Z
Acer Liquid Jade Z
The first thing that impressed us about Acer’s Liquid Jade Z was how it felt in the hand. Despite not relying on the premium feel of aluminium, this plastic body and Corning Gorilla Glass feels remarkably light for a handset with a 5” display.
Dimension-wise is measures 143.5×69.8x8mm and weighs 110g.
Under the hood our review unit came with Android Kitkat (an upgrade to 5.0 Lollipop is available), a quad core 1.5GHz Cortex-A53 processor with a choice of 1Gb of RAM and 8Gb storage or 2Gb RAM and 16Gb storage, expandable by microSD. It comes with 13MP/5MP front and rear cameras capable of shooting 1080p video at 30fps.
What put it above the crowd for us, though, was the dual Nano-SIM slot, making this a great mid-range smartphone for road warriors and frequent fliers.

Price: Varies

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