Review: 1byone magnetic windscreen phone mount

Rating: ★★★★★

PROS: 

  • Excellent design
  • Good value for money
  • Available in 3 different types to suit all cars and drivers

RRP £12.99, best price at time of writing £5.99 on Amazon

I tell you one thing that really gets on my nerves is the cheap, “universal”, Chinese windscreen phone mounts that you can get for your phone. They rattle, they fall apart after a couple of dozen uses, they are bulky and they are a nightmare to set up perfectly.

So you can imagine how happy I was when 1byone gave me one of their newly designed magnetic windscreen phone mounts to try. They actually come in three different flavours – one for the windscreen, car vent and – interestingly enough – the CD drive for your car.

I opted for the windscreen mount as that tends to work best for my particular car (Mk7 Ford Fiesta). This windscreen mount is different to many others that are available on the market as rather than actually holding your phone with a grip of some sort, a magnetic force is used to keep your phone in place.

Inside the box you get the mount itself, a very thin rectangular magnet and an extra circular thicker magnet.

It works like this – first of all you stick the mount in your car as you normally would. Then, you can either

  • place the thin rectangular magnet inside your phone case – between the phone and the case
  • or place the circular magnet to the back of your phone or case with pre-applied adhesive.

I chose to use the small rectangular magnet which fits snugly inside the official iPhone 6 leather case. You wouldn’t even know it was there – the phone barely appears any thicker than it was.

Once you’ve got your magnet fitted you simply place your phone in front of the mount and, of course, it’ll be magnetically stuck to the mount.

The solution works brilliantly for a number of reasons. First of all, it looks really neat and tidy. Looking at it from the right angle (from the drivers seat) it almost looks like the phone is floating in mid-air!

Second – it DOESN’T RATTLE! I know I tend to be melodramatic about these kinds of things but without doubt this is the first phone mount that doesn’t rattle at all while I’m driving. It’s probably one thing that’ll annoy some people more than others but for me having things rattling in the car drives me mad!

Finally, with it being magnetic, it’s really easy to mount and dismount. Rather than having to find  a small button on the side of the mount to release the phone, now you simply just pull the amount away firmly. And then to put it back, just place it in front of the mount again. Easy!

In this particular case I really can’t find anything to complain about. It’s a simple yet very smart idea that works perfectly in the car.

Overall, this is a fantastic phone mount that will definitely have a permanent place in my car. At just £5.99 (at the time of writing), it’s barely any more expensive than a conventional phone mount, almost making it a no brainer!

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FREE Microsoft Office for UK university students!

If you’re a current university student in the UK, you could well have access to full free desktop versions of Microsoft Office through Office 365.

Microsoft says over 99% of UK universities are signed up to the subscription plan so for the length of your studies you can get free access to the entire suite of Microsoft Office suite.

Simply click here to go to Microsoft’s site and enter your university email address. Check your email for a confirmation link, and voila free Office!

You can use the software on up to 5 PCs and/or Macs and the subscription is valid until your studies end. There are also a certain number of colleges that are signed up for the service, so it’s worth checking with your academic email address.

Drop us a comment if you grabbed free Office!

An open letter to Pebble and the new Pebble Time Round…

Here’s something I haven’t done for a while – HAVE A RANT!

Dear Eric Migicovsky,

I’m an original Pebbler, still am to this day and I love it, but can’t help but feel Pebble staff might have started eating bad Apples (pardon the pun)…

– Nice design, fair enough it looks like a normal watch, but..

– Why ditch the great thing about both Pebble’s so far – all week battery life?! 2 days just isn’t enough – fair dos it’s better than Apple Watch but not by far – 2 sizes, countless styles/strap combos… deja vu?

– At $249, I might as well spend 100 dollars more and just get an Apple Watch which does TONNES more and has almost the same battery life – not to mention the vastly better screen.

– That screen resolution isn’t going to get better by itself

Also what on Earth happened to that previous commitment to get timeline to the original Pebble? We were promised that MONTHS ago :(. It’s the same old story with every company – get successful, get rich, forget the people who made you.

Oh and by the way – Jony Ive presents new products way better than you do. You never saw him saying “maybe they’ll get one” with a cheesy yet desperate looking facial expression. Maybe employ someone else to do that job.

Sincerely,

Disgruntled early Pebble supporter.

Linx 1010 Review – best Windows 10 tablet on the market right now?

Rating: ★★★★½

PROS:

  • Massive improvement from a design point-of-view
  • Two USB ports
  • Windows 10 works well

CONS:

  • Low resolution screen (720p)
  • Office 365 no longer included with Windows 10

Buy now from Amazon – without keyboard 

Buy now from Amazon – with keyboard

Buy now from eBay UK with keyboard

Linx have recently released their follow-up to the great value Linx 10 tablet which ran Windows 8.1, and it’s called the Linx 1010. The new version comes just in time for the new release of Windows 10 and it’s one one of the first tablets to come preloaded with the new software. So what’s new – and how does the new tablet stack up against the old one? Let’s find out!

Introduction

The Linx 1010 is designed to follow on from the success of the Linx 10. It’s designed to be great value for money while providing ample performance for most day to day tasks – such as browsing the internet, checking email and watching streaming services on the go. But the Linx 10 did this job absolutely fine as I pointed out in my last review, so what’s new – and is it worth upgrading from the previous generation?

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Review: 1byone 7-port powered USB 3.0 Hub with charging port

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Rating: ★★★★☆

PROS: 

  • Excellent build quality
  • Good transfer speeds and connection stabilty
  • Mountable to your desk with supplied adhesive strip

CONS:

  • Host USB cable might be a little short for desktop PC users

RRP £26.99, best price at time of writing £17.99 on Amazon

1byone were kind enough to send me one of their popular 7-port USB hubs for me to try out. I’m always running out of USB ports on my computer, so I was keen to put this one through the paces and see if it could keep up with my heavy demands!

This isn’t just any old USB hub – it’s built with a very nice aluminium chassis and has a very solid feel in the hand. It’s compatible with both USB 2.0 and 3.0 devices and will work in a USB 2.0 or 3.0 port on your PC – albeit naturally with slower transfer speeds over USB 2.0 as you’d expect.

The packaging for this product is very simple and to the point – something I like to see. No fiddly plastic to have to cut up and no unnecessarily large box. Inside the box you get the USB hub together with a mains power adapter supplying up to 3A of power as well as the power supplied by your host USB port. You also get an adhesive strip, which can easily be affixed to the bottom of the hub for permanent mounting on your desk.

The design of the hub is minimalistic, but it employs a higher level of build quality than many other competing products. The 1byone hub is made with aluminium to strengthen the device and look good on your desk.

The USB hub can be powered independently of your computer with the supplied power adapter if required – in most cases this will be necessary to power all ports sufficiently. If you’re not using all of the USB ports at the same time, you might get away with not having the power supply to hand, but I’d recommend keeping it plugged in all the time.

So how well does the hub work? I conducted some tests, putting the hub under full load with all 7 ports filled to see how well it handled multiple connections. When connected to the mains, the hub was able to successfully connect all of my devices to the host PC without any intermittent communications or drop-outs. Without the power supply, the hub struggles much more but that would be completely understandable given the power constraints.

Data transfer speeds were fairly good over USB 3.0 – all of the onboard ports are USB 3.0 capable and when I connected my USB 3.0 memory stick it achieved very decent transfer speeds for both reads and writes – very close to what it could achieve when directly connected to my PC.

The hub also has a single charging port onboard. When the hub is plugged into the mains, it’ll keep that port powered even if your computer is switched off, so that you can charge up any of your mobile devices. When your computer is switched on, any of the ports can be used for charging. I found this feature to be particularly helpful, as I could leave devices like my phone plugged into the hub overnight to charge without needing to leave my computer on.

If I had anything I’d like to see improved on the device it’d be the length of the built-in host USB cable on the hub. For laptop users a shorter USB cable is likely to be better and means less cable clutter on the desk, but it was just a little too short to comfortably reach the back of my desktop PC case and sit on the desk where I wanted it. As the USB cable is permanently fixed into the hub it leaves little option of extending it – except with a USB extension cable, which is likely to lead to reduced data transfer speeds. This makes it difficult to confidently give the device 5 stars and is the only reason I’m giving it 4.

Other than that minor complaint, I’m very happy with the hub. Not once did I run into any trouble connecting any of my USB devices and I didn’t experience a single device connection drop-out. This is without doubt a very well built USB hub that will stand the test of time. It’s just a shame that the host USB cable isn’t a tiny bit longer or extendible.

Buy now from Amazon