Hi, this is Wayne again with a topic “Favorite Tech of The Year 2023”.
Hey everyone Travis here and we are about to wrap up 2023. I feel, like this year, went by so fast. There was a lot of tech that came out this year, but I wanted to pick some of my favorites that I use the most or I found the most interesting and in no particular order. Let’S get into my favorite tech of the Year. First, up is the Sonos era 300, which is a phenomenal speaker on its own, and it levels up even more when you pair it with some other Sonos products.
The aa300 cranks it up a notch well over the 1sl in the fact that it’s a larger speaker and it has dedicated height channels and some other features that I think you’ll really dig. This speaker has six amplifiers four tweeters and two woofers that all come together for some really good sound quality from a design standpoint on the outside. It’S a little bit of a departure from the standard Sonos speaker like a 1sl or a homepod in the fact that it’s a curved bow tie type design, which I really like. It is larger than a standard Sonos 1, but not to the point where it’s massive and it’s going to take up a lot more space if you’re replacing a 1 or a 1sl.
I really like the capacitive touch controls on the top, where you can change volume. Just by sliding your finger and on the back there’s two additional features that I really like most smart speakers have mute functionality built into the app, but you never know if they’re really on and with this there’s an actual Hardware toggle. So you can flip it on or flip it off and know that the microphone is off. The other thing is USBC on the back, which has multiple purposes one you can connect it via ether with an adapter or two.
You can use it as a line in for a turntable additionally, when it comes to connectivity. Sonos speakers of course, run over Wi-Fi typically, but in this case you have Wi-Fi and Bluetooth and AirPlay, and my favorite part about the Sonos ecosystem within itself is the level of modularity. If you buy the speaker by itself and then you want to add on a second one for a stereo pair or you want to add in a mini sub or a full-size sub, you can or if you want to set up an immersive set later, you can Utilize this for one of your rear speakers.
So, overall, when ites comes to my smart speaker of choice for this year, it is definitely the Sonos AA, 300, I’m so sorry, homepod next up with another audio related product is the apog duet. 3 apog interfaces are some of the best in the business and they have a legendary name for their converters in terms of setup here, Stevie and I both have an identical setup with the same speakers and same interface, we’re both rocking the duet 3 and a pair Of genel 8320a now I know the duet 3 is not new this year. But what is new this year is the limited edition set. This set is a limited edition bundle that includes the duet 3, with the duet, 3 dock and some extra plugins. Now, personally, I do not do any sort of music production or recording, and I basically use the duet 3 as a fancy deck and, as I mentioned before, the converters in this thing are amazing.
It supports audio up to 24-bit 192, which is perfect for Apple music. Lossless and for referencing audio when we’re making our videos to make sure that everything sounds great from a design standpoint. I love its small size and the fact that it’s USBC and it’s bus powered. So you don’t have to worry about carrying a power brick which allows you to be able to use it with a Macbook or an iPad on the go.
So when it comes to the audio interface of my choice for this year, it’s definitely the duet 3. Next up is the Samsung T9 external SSD. I’Ve used the T5, the t7 and the t7 shield, and this T9 is even better. I love the size and portability of these drives and it’s super convenient just to hand it to someone that has project files on it.
The T9 is a step up in terms of performance compared to the t7 shield, and it is available up to a 4 tab option. Personally, I am using the two tbyte option for double duty. The first thing is working off of it in terms of projects and that iMac video that I just came out with was edited off of this drive. The second part is using it with the iPhone 15 Pro Max to record log externally.
The performance of this drive is fantastic and they are super reliable and it’s my go-to external SSD. Now, if you asked me in January, if Apple was going to come out with two generations of Apple silicon in the same year, I would have said that you were were crazy and I guess well, they did it. M2, Pro and M2 Max came out earlier this year and in the later part of this year we got M3 Pro and M3 Max, and definitely my choice for the computer of the year is the 16-in space black MacBook Pro. This thing is an absolute monster in terms of performance and it’s basically on par with the M2 Ultra Mac Studio.
I love the 16-in MacBook Pro because it results in the best battery life out of all the pro machines, the largest display, which is phenomenal, and some speakers that really make you question. Is this sound coming out of this MacBook? I have two videos that cover the MacBook Pro extensively. One was dedicated to bench marks which was honestly crazy and then the other was my review and thoughts on the machine.
So if you haven’t seen those check them out, but if you’re looking for a Powerhouse of a Mac that you can take with you, the 16-in MacBook Pro is the move. Now, when it comes to this year’s iPhone, there are three specific features that stood out to me and honestly, I think the iPhone 15 Pro Max is super legit. One is the enclosure which has had its own level of controversy, but in terms of the weight of the device.
I didn’t realize that I would appreciate this as much as I did. It’S much lighter in the pocket and while using it, and it almost feels like I’m going back to the weight of like an iPhone 7 plus next is the ability to record in prores log internally and externally, with A’s color. I would have never expected this level of feature out of an iPhone natively, but Apple did it.
You can squeeze so much out of this phone footage to the point where it doesn’t even look like phone footage, I’m not the biggest fan of the way. The Apple log l looks, but if you use something from Phantom Luts like the Airy emulation, L, it honestly is very close to the Alexa mini, which is crazy for a phone check out Phantom. Let’S video on that, if you want to learn more about that and that’s become my go-to L for the phone footage last is the 120 mm telephoto camera. Now I’ve been a big fan of the telephoto camera on the iPhone ever since the 7 plus – and this is such an upgrade. 120 mm looks great if you’re trying to get something from far away, and it looks phenomenal for portraits as well, and I love the amount of range you get when you combine the ultra wide the main wide and the telephoto together.
You can pretty much get anything. You need with these three lenses and overall, in my opinion, the iPhone 15 Pro Max is an excellent upgrade, especially for those rocking an iPhone older than the iPhone 12 Pro Max going hand inand with the iPhone is the airpods pro Second Generation. Well, 2.5 generation the airpods pro second generation came out last year and we got a bit of an upgrade this year with a few features. We got three notable features with this year’s half upgrade, which is USBC better dust, resistance and lossless audio support for the Apple Vision.
Pro now earlier, when the airpods pro 2.5 came out, I upgraded from the first generation ones from 2019, and I didn’t realize that this was going to be such a massive upgrade. They are all around better in terms of stereo performance, Atmos performance and even when taking calls. These are much more enjoyable to use and if you haven’t picked up a set of airpods pro yet definitely go for the airpods pro second generation. With with the USB C case, and if you have picked up the second generation, the lightning version, the USBC case is now available separately, which will give you that better dust resistance, but not the lossless audio support for the Apple Vision Pro last up on my list Is two gaming devices? First up is the PS5 slim.
Now we are 3 years into the PS5 life cycle and if you haven’t bought a PS5, yet I think now is the time the slim console impressed me more than I honestly expected to, because it’s actually smaller than what it looks like in the photos. In terms of features, it is identical to a standard PS5, but offers three different features. One is the replacement of the usba, a port on the front, with an additional USBC Port. Two is the overall, smaller, Slimmer size and three is the removable Blu-ray Drive and with the holay Sony has two bundles.
They have a Modern Warfare, 3 bundle and a Spider-Man 2 bundle which basically takes off 70 bucks off the top, because you’re getting that game included. So if you’re thinking about it, a PS5 for 430 bucks is a great deal now. I do think that Sony will probably eventually have a PS5 Pro either next year or the year after, but if you’re still on a PS4 and looking for a time to upgrade. I think you should do it now. Sony’S got quite the ecosystem of accessories, with controller colors, Pro controller options, multiple headset options and even the PlayStation portal, remote player, which is okay but there’s a full ecosystem out for the PS5 now and plenty of games. So you can easily walk into a Best, Buy or a Target and pick one up off the shelf.
So the last item on the list is the Rog Ally. Now, I’m not the biggest portable gaming user and the last portable gaming device I bought was a Nintendo switch in 2019, but it pretty much remains docked an exclusively used for Mario Kart. I really dig the design of the Rog Ally and the fact that it has some higher level specs than something like a steam deck. It has a 1080p High refresh rate display that looks great and it has a higher level AMD s so that pushes games a lot further than the steam deck.
Can I also dig the external design, aesthetic that Asus went with this thing. It’S a very clean, looking design. The only caveats I will say is the battery can drain super fast if you’re running a high-end game and it runs windows in this case Windows is a blessing and a curse. On the blessing side. It’S windows, it’s literally a PC. So you can run any Windows app that you normally would on like a laptop or a desktop, but at the same time it’s Windows you’ll, run into audities that make the user experience feel broken. As this is not a laptop or a desktop, and I think if Microsoft can make a tailored UI that looks exactly like the Xbox for the Mobile gaming PCs, it would take it to the next level. So that has been my favorite tech of the Year clocking. In at eight items, I will have links to all these things down below. Additionally, as we are wrapping up the year, I want to say thank you for all the support on the videos. It means a lot to me comment down below your favorite piece of tech for the Year. This is Travis and have a great rest of the year and see you next year.
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