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VIZIO SS2521-C6 sound bar packs big sound into a short slab

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It’s sleek, it’s boomy, it… fits under my 55″ VIZIO TV!

Today, I’m reviewing the VIZIO SS2521-C6 sound stand, as seen here under my TV:

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If you own a VIZIO TV and let it sit on its own feet, you might have noticed there isn’t much space under the screen.

For my particular VIZIO TV (the VIZIO M55-C2) there’s 2.75″ between table and the TV’s bottom frame,and just a teeny bit over 3″ from table to screen.

Most sound bars are between 2.75″ and 3″ tall, so most of them would block some of the screen edge, if not the screen itself (especially to any viewers who might be laying down on the sofa).

Shopping for a sound bar that would fit under my TV

Unfortunately, nearly every sound bar with a decent rating and reasonable price seems to be at least 3″ tall.

And, because I’m picky and wanted to make this difficult, I also had the following criteria:

  • no additional speakers (no room on either side of my TV)
  • no separate subwoofer (nowhere to put it)
  • narrow enough to fit between my TV’s feet or small enough to fit in one of the cubbies under my TV

That ruled out some obvious choices, including the Bose Solo 5 (my initial choice, but it’s too tall) and the best-selling VIZIO SB3821-C6 38-Inch 2.1 Channel Sound Bar with Wireless Subwoofer (also too tall, plus I’m not thrilled about wireless equipment in general even though wireless subwoofers are generally fine).

We also considered the Samsung HW-K450 2.1 but it seemed like it might also be too tall to fit under the TV and I wanted to see if we could get away with no subwoofer, since there’s no good place to put one in the apartment. Finally, there was also this AmazonBasics 2.0 Channel Bluetooth Sound Bar which was a close fit at 2.6″ tall, but I ultimately decided it was too cheap, and I’ve had enough “Amazon Basics” stuff die on me to be leery of the brand now. No wonder I used my Bose SoundLink Mini as a sound bar for my TV for so long! 

I only discovered this sound bar in the first place because I needed something that would fit under or in front of my TV without blocking the screen, but I’m glad I did: there’s a lot to love here beyond its physical size and shape.

Note: If you have space for the skinny / wide “traditional” sound bar design with or without a separate subwoofer, there’s no real reason to limit your search to “sound stands”. This product is designed to solve a specific space constraint problem – there’s no inherent advantage to sound stands unless you benefit from its size/shape.

“Create a problem, sell the solution”

Fortunately, VIZIO is aware of the problem they’ve created.  Behold, the VIZIO SS2521-C6.

It’s a reasonably priced “sound stand” that just so happens to be short enough to fit under their wide-footed flatscreen TVs. It’s more like a sound slab, really – 11 pounds of speaker that fits in the space under your low-clearance TV. You can also set a TV directly on it (hence the “stand”, I suppose), up to a whopping 60 lbs if your TV has a pedestal-style foot.

vizio_c6_sound_bar_side

Short enough to fit under VIZIO TVs, the VIZIO SS2521-C6 sound stand is a beefy sound machine for its price.

But how does it sound?

Sound quality is a subjective thing, but I like to think we (my partner and I) are pickier than average.

He’s a hobbyist musician and audiophile and I’m that person who gets into your car and starts fiddling with the treble and bass until it doesn’t sound like a tin can anymore. My concern with the VIZIO was that since VIZIO is selling to a captive audience, they wouldn’t have as much of an incentive to make it awesome.

Fortunately, my fears were unfounded: VIZIO made a fantastic sound bar and I’m super happy with it.

Speaker specs

For those of you who speak speaker, it contains two 2.75″ full range drivers and 4.5″ subwoofer speaker response (tech specs here on Vizio’s site).

It’s just one slab of speaker, but it sounds like more

It actually tricked me into thinking something (or someone :o) was behind me in the apartment and made me turn around. It’s not a surround sound system with the little speakers on stands behind your sofa, but it does bounce the audio off stuff behind you to make it sound more dimensional.

The bass is rich and boomy

I hate weak bass, and if you hate it too, you won’t be sad with this speaker. It’s so good you might actually want to set it a little less than the default, and I can’t believe I’m saying that because I’m usually a 100%-isn’t-enough person when it comes to bass. We have ours set to 1 dot less than the default (middle dot) in the settings.

It can go LOUD

We use this sound bar in my city apartment, though, so we could only responsibly test it up to a certain volume (near-deafening), but I believe the volume should be sufficient for the vast majority of TV watching setups. Our 1 bedroom apartment is a living room/computer room/kitchen open concept room, and it can out-loud all of those things at once.

VIZIO states that the stand “…packs a powerful punch combining a room-shaking volume of up to 101 dB at less than 1% harmonic distortion*”. 101 dB puts it right between a lawn mower and a rock concert, and 85 dB is generally considered the volume at which sounds become harmful to your hearing. Suffice to say, it’s plenty loud.

Virtual surround sound that can be toggled on / off

Depending on the size/layout of your room, you might like the virtual surround sound setting on or off. Basically, the speaker will try to bounce sounds off the walls of your room to fake surround sound. This effect is particularly noticeable you have a wall right behind your sofa. We don’t have a wall right behind our sofa, but we keep this on as we think it sounds “fuller” with it on.

» See the VIZIO SS2521-C6 on Amazon.com «

Feature rundown

For relatively basic TV setups, the VIZIO SS2521-C6 should have everything you need. It’s basically your TV’s missing sound system. (When TVs got thin, there wasn’t any room for decent speakers inside them anymore, hence the rise of sound bars and separate speaker systems, even for people who aren’t home audio enthusiasts).

This diagram of the remote (from the sound stand’s manual) is a good summary of the features:

What’s great about the VIZIO SS2521-C6

  • Fits under my TV
  • Can sit a TV on it
  • Remote included
  • Cables included
  • Great audio quality
  • TVOL (TruVolume) for volume leveling
  • Pleasing LEDs
  • Easy setup

Fits under your TV!

You can either set a TV directly on the stand, provided its base is sufficiently small, or over it, provided the feet are sufficiently far apart.

If your TV has a pedestal foot and weighs less than 60 lbs, it can sit on top of this VIZIO sound stand.

My VIZIO TV has two feet that are about 38″ apart at their narrowest point, so mine straddles the sound stand. This works out well for me – that space was just going to waste anyway, and I didn’t have to find room on a shelf under the TV (which I don’t have, anyway – the table my TV sits on is made up of square cubbies).

Cables are included

I hate it when I buy something, get it home, set it up, and realize the manufacturer assumed I already had the cables I would need.

In our case, we set up using optical, but there are a variety of connection types available:

  • Analog Audio – Stereo RCA
  • Analog Audio – 3.5mm stereo mini jack
  • Digital Audio – RCA (Coaxial)
  • Digital Audio – Optical (Toslink) 
  • USB Input – USB 

For more on the differences between audio cables, check out Apartment Therapy’s guide.

Setup is butt simple: connect the cable of your choice to the sound stand and the TV, plug in the power, and turn it on – done.

Notably, there are no HDMI ports on this sound stand. It cannot take in HDMI and send it on to the TV. In other words, it doesn’t act like a receiver or “hub” for your media devices. Depending on the complexity of your setup, you might not even miss it. We just have a TV and a PlayStation 4 in this setup. (If you also have, say, a BluRay player, Roku, multiple gaming systems, set top box, DVR, etc – or are simply accustomed to having a receiver – this won’t add more ports for all your devices or handle audio separately the way a receiver will.)

TruVolume (TVOL on the remote) makes volume level consistent

This is a setting you toggle on/off. It makes quiet things louder and louder things quieter.

In practice, enabling this feature lets you hear whispers without sudden loud stuff blowing you off the sofa.

LED lights are pleasing

When it’s on, there’s just one white LED on in the lower left corner. A row of LEDs indicates volume or settings, but only when you’re actively adjusting those settings.

Best of all: when the sound bar is off, there are no bright LEDs shining in the darkness. (If you ever sleep in the same room as your TV, you’ll appreciate this.) I find crawling text and glowing settings bars distracting, so I’m glad to not see those things on this sound bar.

The whole thing is just ‘plug and play’

There’s not a lot to set up. Just put it in place, hook it up to your TV, and start watching. Adjust the bass and treble to your liking and you’re golden.

Affordably priced

For this TV in our downtown apartment, we didn’t need an expensive surround sound speaker setup or a receiver. Our budget would’ve gone up to around $400 for the right sound bar, but we were plenty pleased with this one (which can be found for $200 or less, depending where you shop and if you can find it on sale).

VIZIO SS2521-C6 drawbacks

  • Doesn’t support streaming audio over WiFi
  • You cannot add a separate subwoofer or more speakers later
  • Some people say it vibrates
  • Doesn’t wake up with the TV

Alas, no WiFi streaming to this speaker

I’m getting greedy with this one, but I like my speakers to do multiple jobs, and I love streaming from Spotify over WiFi. It’s Bluetooth enabled, so you can play music to it from your phone/computer over Bluetooth, but playing music over Bluetooth is so inconvenient and inferior now that WiFi streaming is a thing.

(I’ll keep using my Bose Mini SoundLink + Echo Dot for streaming over WiFi.)

You can’t add more speakers later

I don’t feel like I want to add more speakers, but definitely don’t think of this as something you can “build on” over time. It’s not expandable. You can’t add a subwoofer or satellite speakers to this sound bar.

Some people say it vibrates

I haven’t personally noticed any vibration, but that could be because we don’t listen to it on max volume or because it’s sitting on a solid wood surface. People who say it vibrates also say you can fix the vibration with little rubbery foot pads.

Doesn’t wake up with the TV

Remember the good old days, when you could turn on your TV and the sound was on, too? I’m probably just lazy, but I wish this thing would somehow just turn on when the TV is turned on. (This problem probably exists with all sound bars, and you can solve it with a universal remote.)

What’s in the box?

You get the sound stand, a remote, setup guide, and cables for RCA to 3.5mm, digital optical, coax, and a power cable. In our case, we didn’t need to buy anything else to complete the setup.

Unboxing the SS2521-C6: all the cables you could ever need

The bottom line

We love it. It solved our problem of needing sound bar that fit under our TV, and it sounds great. We love the built-in subwoofer (we don’t have anywhere to put a standalone one) and even though we’re both pretty picky about bass, we think the bass is great.

Keep your expectations reasonable: without a separate subwoofer, there’s a limit to what this sound stand can accomplish bass-wise. It’s not a receiver, and you can’t expand it with more speakers later.

If you read this far and realized you don’t actually need the sound stand form factor (or you think you’ll miss a separate woofer), check out the Vizio SB3821-C6 38-Inch 2.1 Channel Sound Bar with Wireless Subwoofer. It’s cheaper and the reviews are stellar.

However, if you’re like us and need to stuff a sound bar under your TV, the VIZIO SS2521-C6 is absolutely the way to go!

» Check out the SS2521-C6 sound stand on Amazon.com «

 

Graco Pack ‘n Play Bassinet vs. Pack ‘n Play Travel Lite with Stages

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First thing I learned when shopping for an affordable, travel capable crib was that Graco makes a ton of Pack N Play models. You can easily waste hours comparing them all, but I wasted those hours for you and am here to report back. graco_pack_n_play_bassinet_vs_graco_pack_n_play_travel_lite

I own both the Pack N Play bassinet (pictured at left) and the Pack N Play Travel Lite with Stages. The full-size Pack N Play is in the living room, the Travel Lite is in the bedroom.

The full-size Pack N Play is good at being useful for a long time; as your baby grows, you can use it as a play pen. Before that, it’s a huge comfy bassinet.

The Graco Travel Lite crib is good at being smaller – the full-size Pack N Play won’t fit in my bedroom, so the Travel Lite is our bedroom bassinet. However, even though it can also become a playpen, baby will outgrow it sooner.

How they’re alike

Both Pack N Play models are designed for babies ages birth to toddler. Both have a suspended sleep surface several inches from the top edge for babies that are too young to pull themselves up on the edge. This suspended sleep surface is great because it means you don’t have to bend very far to pick up or put down your baby, which you will do like 100 times a day in the early weeks.

There are cheaper Pack N Play models, but they lack the (removable) suspended “bassinet” feature. I wouldn’t want to bend almost all the way to the floor to pick up and put down my baby. If you get the bassinet model, then you’ve got a piece of furniture that can hold your newborn from birth to toddler years.

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When your baby grows, the bassinet part can be removed and the pad placed at the bottom of the Pack n Play. Now the bassinet is a playpen, and get over 2 years of usefulness out of a single thing. Cool!

In summary, both the Pack n Play bassinet and the Travel Lite:

  • Are safe for newborns and infants
  • Are easy to assemble/take down
  • Have a foldable “sleeping pad” 
  • Become a playpen if you take out the suspended bedding part

Pack n Play bassinet review, pros and cons

Baby B definitely prefers the big Pack N Play to the Travel Lite. That could be because we use a Dream on Me mattress inside the Pack N Play. This Dream on Me 3″ mattress is noticeably softer and more supportive than the pad that comes with the Pack N Play. However, it’s not so soft and mushy so as to be unsafe – it’s just got a nicer feel to it, especially with a lightly padded mattress cover.

PROS

  • Fits the Dream on Me mattress, which Baby B seems to prefer sleeping on
  • Baby can lay at any orientation inside it
  • Larger play area – 39.50 x 28.25 x 29.00 inches
  • Will last longer into baby’s childhood 
  • Cheaper than the Travel Lite (despite being larger and generally more useful)
  • Folds up easily, travels fairly well (that is, in a car – I wouldn’t carry this thing recreationally)
  • Wheels on one end for easy moving
  • Looks nice, lots of color palettes available
  • Big enough to use it as a makeshift changing table that baby can’t roll out of

Baby B is 10 lbs / 4 weeks old in this photo. As you can see, there’s plenty of room for her to grow and still sleep in this Pack N Play. When she starts pulling herself up, we’ll lower the mattress to the bottom of the crib by removing the bassinet insert.

pack_n_play_as_a_changing_table

CONS

  • Doesn’t fit in our bedroom
  • Included sleeping pad is hard and rather Spartan; we had to buy a better mattress along with sheets and a mattress pad for it before Baby B would actually sleep on it peacefully
  • Not a full-size crib, so forget about ramps and bedding intended for actual cribs

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Pack n Play Travel Lite review, pros and cons

Honestly, unless your room just can’t hold the standard sized Pack N Play, there’s not much reason to get the Travel Lite. However, if you can’t fit the normal size one, this is the next best thing and way more awesome than similarly sized competitor products, such as a standalone bassinet that baby will outgrow within a few months. At least the Travel Lite can become a play pen (or fairly deep storage, I suppose!) as baby outgrows it; other co-sleepers and bassinets I came close to buying are really only good at being a baby bed.

PROS

  • Fits in smaller spaces – 20% smaller than normal Graco playards (23.2 x 33.5 x 32.2 inches)
  • Included sleeping pad is softer than normal Pack n Play’s sleeping pad, but not as soft as a Dream on Me mattress
  • Includes “canopy” cover
  • Wheels on one end of it for easy moving

CONS

  • No obvious equivalent to the Dream on Me mattress that fits in the larger Pack N Play
  • Sheets for its pad are not readily available; I used a set of stretchy 20″x30″ jersey pillow cases from Target
  • Baby will outgrow sooner
  • Pricier than a normal Pack N Play
  • Only available in one color palette right now

Baby B is about 9 lbs 3 oz in this photo. As you can see, she will outgrow the Travel Lite long before she outgrows the bigger Pack N Play.

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Which one should I get?

Unless it just won’t fit in the space you have, get the full size Pack N Play.

It’ll last longer into your child’s life, it’s cheaper, and there are more mattress options if your baby hates the included sleeping pad like mine does. It travels just as well as the Travel Lite crib and is just as portable around your home.

My recommended “Pack N Play starter kit”

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Here’s my exact Pack N Play setup, mattress and all.

This particular combination of play yard, mattress, sheets, and pad is the result of a couple hours exploring Amazon’s “Customers also bought”, checking dimensions, materials, and user reviews. The Dream on Me mattress fits perfectly and snugly – no gaps for baby to fall into.

It’s really easy to accidentally end up on a product meant for a full-size crib, so always check dimensions before buying.

To save you trial and error, here are links to the exact Pack N Play play yard and bedding I use:

  • Pack N Play bassinet – mine’s “Pasadena”, but as long as yours has the bassinet option it should be similar (if not identical) to mine
  • 3″ Dream on Me mattress – fits perfectly (no gaps) and my baby actually sleeps on it (flat on her back, no less)
  • American Baby Company 100% cotton sheets – buy at least two so you can always have a clean one ready to go (I have 4)
  • Waterproof mattress pad for a bit of softness (make sure yours is  27 inches x 39 inches x 5 inches). You can probably get by without a mattress pad, but the Dream on Me mattress has a plastic surface and I think the extra bit of cotton from the mattress pad adds warmth and comfort without adding any hazardous bulk. 

Note on mattress safety: Whether you decide to use a supplemental mattress is a personal decision – do your research and don’t use (or stop using) anything that makes you feel insecure about your baby’s safety. Do not use a mattress that does not fit snugly on all sides, and don’t add padding or blankets beyond the mattress and sheets.

The best speakers for listening to Spotify via Spotify Connect

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Sonos Play:3 – just one of the many great speakers you can pair with Spotify Connect

I’m a recent Spotify convert, but I’m already spoiled by the convenience of streaming Spotify music to a speaker over WiFi in my home.

This article is about how Spotify Connect works and speaker recommendations that suit your budget and any existing audio equipment you already have.

What is Spotify Connect?

With Spotify, your phone, tablet, PC, or laptop no longer has to be the source of the song files themselves. Pick a song and it plays from Spotify’s servers out of that device.

With Spotify Connect (a Spotify Premium feature), your phone, tablet, PC, or laptop can be like a “remote control” for the music you are playing, and a different speaker on your WiFi network can play the music.

You can play anything Spotify has on offer (which is a staggering variety of music, both niche and mainstream). Cool!

Some huge benefits to the Spotify Connect new hotness:

  • You don’t need to store the audio files on your device
  • Play from any of Spotify’s curated playlists (or your own custom made playlists on Spotify)
  • You don’t have to “pair” your device with the speaker
  • Your laptop or phone can still play its own sounds or make calls without interrupting the music
  • You can leave the room or even the WiFi network with your device and the music will keep playing
  • Sound quality is better over WiFi
  • Change which speaker is playing Spotify music without having to restart the song or lose your place in the playlist

With just a few drawbacks

  • Your device and speaker must be on the same WiFi network when you kick off the playlist
  • Spotify Connect doesn’t work with local files, so if you have a song that Spotify doesn’t, you won’t be able to play it over Spotify Connect
  • Spotify Connect is part of Spotify Premium, so you have to subscribe to get it

You can get some pretty complex setups going

  • From your phone, choose a playlist of lullabies for your baby’s room
  • From your PC, change the song being played through your TV’s PlayStation4
  • From your phone, stop music from playing on your PC in the other room… and start it playing in your kitchen
  • Ask your Amazon Echo (Alexa) to play a playlist from Spotify without lifting a hand

How to use Spotify Connect

Again, you have to have Spotify Premium. Once you do, in the Spotify app, click DEVICES AVAILABLE to get a list of available devices.

On Windows, it looks like this:

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Select a speaker and, if necessary, authorize it to Spotify.

When you want to change which speaker or device is playing music, just pick that device out of DEVICES AVAILABLE. You can do this from any instance of the app.

So many different ways to play music with Spotify Connect

Once you see how cool Spotify Connect is, you might want to expand your speaker collection to take advantage of it. Spotify has its own long list of recommended speakers but this list isn’t sorted, features a lot of very high priced products, and doesn’t explain the overwhelming amount of options available (it also leaves out some really good choices).

You don’t necessarily have to buy new speakers – scroll down for some solutions for using speakers you already have, even if they aren’t WiFi. What you choose depends a lot on your budget, your wants, and what you already have.

In this section, I’ll show you what I would buy (or have bought) for playing music over Spotify Connect in a variety of scenarios.

Best Standalone WiFi speakers for Spotify Connect

These are speakers with the built-in ability to connect to a WiFi network. This is as “plug and play” as it gets. You simply put your WiFi speaker on the network, authorize it to Spotify, and there you go – now you can play anything Spotify has to offer from that speaker!

Be careful that you’re buying an actual WiFi speaker and not just a Bluetooth speaker – a lot of Bluetooth-only speakers show up in searches for “WiFi speakers”. You want a WiFi speaker that’s always “on” and waiting for instruction from you.

SpeakerPriceSound qualityBluetoothSpecial features

Bose SoundTouch 10		$$BetterYesRemote control, 6 on-unit hotkeys you can map to play certain playlists

Libratone ZIPP Mini		$$GoodYes10+ hour rechargeable battery, pair up to 6 ZIPPs

Libratone ZIPP		$$$BetterYes10+ hour rechargeable battery, pair up to 6 ZIPPs

Sonos Play:1		$$BetterNoPart of the expandable Sonos family

Sonos Play:3		$$BestYesPart of the expandable Sonos family

Bowers & Williams Zeppelin		$$$$$BestYesDeluxe audio quality

I picked these speakers because:

  • All are WiFi speakers
  • They all have excellent sound quality
  • They work with Spotify Connect right out of the box
  • Most are within a $200-$400 price range
  • All have overwhelmingly positive Amazon reviews
  • Some have nice extras like a remote control, a battery so you can take it with you around the house, or buttons you can save to certain playlists

Bose SoundTouch 10

I think the Bose has a slight edge when it comes to overall sound quality vs. the similarly priced speakers. It’s just got a wonderful richness to it that’s kept me coming back to the Bose brand over and over.

bose_soundtouch_10_with_remote

The SoundTouch is the most affordable Bose speaker with WiFi connectivity built in.

But wait, there’s more! The Bose SoundTouch 10 has 6 customizable buttons that you can map to actions, such as playing a particular Spotify playlist. 1 can be your “morning routine” playlist, 2 your “chillout at night” playlist, etc. The remote control gives you access to those same hotkeys.

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Bose SoundTouch’s 6 buttons can be personalized: set them to play your favorite Spotify playlist, Pandora station, iTunes playlists, and more.

The SoundTouch 10 supports both WiFi and Bluetooth, so you still have the option to bring it with you to places where WiFi isn’t available and stream music from your device to it (provided you can plug it into AC power).

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Libratone ZIPP WiFi + Bluetooth Multi-Room Wireless Speaker

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The ZIPP comes in four attractive colors and is truly portable (and wireless) with a rechargeable 10-hour lithium battery.

With its beautiful physical design and excellent sound quality, the ZIPP WiFi + Bluetooth Multi-Room wireless speaker is like an Amazon Tap on steroids. The 360 degree sound projection, carry strap, and 10-hour lithium battery all add up to make the Zipp the most portable WiFi capable speaker in this comparison. The ZIPP might be the perfect speaker for you if you want fantastic sound out of a speaker you can easily grab and take with you into the backyard, along on a road trip to the beach, or into your apartment complex’s rec room.

It comes in two versions that are fairly close in price and features: ZIPP and ZIPP Mini.

libratone_zipp_vs_zipp_mini

These two speakers are almost identical in features (battery, carry strap, touch controls on top). The major difference is the wattage and the size of the woofer, which mainly affects the overall sound quality and how well it holds up at louder volumes.

ZIPP speaker

  • 4″ neodynium woofer
  • 100 watts total power
  • 10 hour battery
  • 3.3 lbs
  • 10.3″ tall

ZIPP Mini speaker

  • 3″ neodynium woofer
  • 60 watts total power
  • 10 hour battery
  • 2.4 lbs
  • 8.8″ tall

If you’re having a hard time deciding, go with the full size ZIPP. These two speakers are very close in price and the bigger ZIPP has an edge when it comes to overall sound quality.

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Sonos Play:1 Compact Smart Speaker

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The Sonos Play:1 offers some of the best sound quality you can find at this price point.

The Sonos Play:1 Compact Smart Speaker is part of a whole family of amazing-sounding speakers that coordinate to play the same song in multiple rooms, or stream (via Sonos’s own proprietary app) different songs to different speakers.

The Play:1 is actually the entry-level speaker in the family: there’s also the Sonos Play:3 and the Sonos Play:5, which are also WiFi enabled and better at filling larger areas with even better sound. The Play:1 is at home on your desktop or bedroom, somewhere where you aren’t necessarily trying to fill the room but just want some easy listening right next to where you’re sitting. It still sounds good at higher volumes, but if you think you’ll be regularly filling a room with music, the Sonos Play:3 is better suited to that job.

When you synchronize a whole bunch of Sonos speakers, the auditory experience is nothing short of incredible, and there’s virtually no limit to how big an indoor space you can soak with Sonos goodness.

sonos_family_play_1_3_5

There isn’t a bad one in the bunch: the whole Sonos Play family is fantastic.

If you only intend to get one speaker you’ll miss out on the Sonos’s unique feature and major selling point: its ability to integrate with a collection of Sonos speakers. With multiple Sonos speakers, you can fill a room or have the same song play in multiple rooms.

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Sonos Play:3 Smart Speaker for Streaming Music

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Bigger, better sound from the Sonos Play:3 make it a smart choice for better, bigger rooms.

If your budget allows for it, it’s totally worth it to go up a bracket and get the Play:3. Compared to the Play:1, the 3’s sound is richer, deeper, and crystal clear even at high volumes.

The Sonos Play:3 has two mid-range drivers, one tweeter (each with their own dedicated amp), and a bass radiator (contrast with the Play:1’s two custom-designed drivers with dedicated amps). Basically, the Play:3 adds a tweeter and bass radiator – and what you hear is a richer range of sound. It’s serious business in a fairly conveniently sized package.

You can orient it vertically or horizontally. There’s no battery in it, so it’s not really meant to be portable, and it works with virtually any streaming service, not just Spotify Connect.

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Bowers & Williams Zeppelin

Full disclosure: I don’t own this speaker and I don’t know anyone who does, so it’s the only speaker in this list I haven’t tried in person and listened to myself. Spotify.com recommends it, though, and I felt this list could use at least one super deluxe option.

The Bowers & Williams Zeppelin has the widest “stereo image” of all the speakers in this list. (Normally you’d use multiple speakers to get a wider stereo image.) The Zeppelin has 2 double dome tweeters, two midrange drivers with FST technology and a 6.5″ subwoofer for deep bass. If that comes off as just a bunch of jargon, don’t worry – it means this speaker has multiple sets of what makes speakers sound great, plus a generously sized subwoofer for its size.

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This is a total luxury purchase for music streaming. If you want the experience of multiple good speakers packed into one awesome speaker (and your budget is generous), check out the Bowers & Williams Zeppelin.

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I have an awesome home theater and I want to play Spotify music through it over WiFi

Cheap solution: get an Amazon Echo Dot. Amazon Echo Dot turns any speaker into a Spotify Connect capable speaker. You can control a Dot (and through it, your speakers) with your voice or the Alexa app. (See the Dot section further down in this article to learn more about using Dot with Spotify Connect).

Pricier solution: upgrade your receiver. If your current one is kinda old and you want more ports, WiFi support, etc, you might be best off upgrading your receiver to a WiFi receiver (and keeping all your existing speakers).

The Onkyo HT-R593 is a reasonably priced choice that supports both Bluetooth and WiFi. This isn’t quite the one my family uses, but it’s close (ours was part of an Onkyo speaker bundle). 

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Upgrade to a WiFi capable receiver and you can stream Spotify to your existing home theater setup. Look, it even has a Spotify sticker on it!

I don’t have an awesome home theater but now I kinda want one

Now, if you want to upgrade your entire home theater speaker setup, check out the Onkyo HT-S7700 5.1.2-Ch Dolby Atmos Ready Network A/V Receiver/Speaker Package. This is what we have in our house for TV/movies/gaming/recreational music listening and it’s just an amazing home theater set. The bundled receiver works great with Spotify.

 

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The Onkyo HT-S7700 is an all-in-one home theater package (5 speakers and a WiFi capable receiver). We often stream Spotify to it when chillin’ out in the family room.

I have (or want) an Amazon Echo, how does well Echo work with Spotify?

In a word: seamlessly.

I use Spotify Connect with my Amazon Echo all the time. The Echo lives on my nightstand and gets a lot of use as a late-night relaxing music playing machine. Spotify Connect totally replaced Amazon Music for me, which I was only using begrudgingly (the Windows application interface takes some getting used to, and I hate when I ask it to play a song and get a sample instead).

You can tell it, “Alexa, play <PlaylistName> playlist from Spotify” and it’ll find the playlist, whether it’s a Spotify playlist or one you created yourself. You can also set Spotify as the default music player so you don’t have to specify, “from Spotify”.

One caveat: Spotify has a lot of its own playlists, so you might have to come up with creative names for the playlists you make. For instance, I struggled to get Alexa to understand that “New Stuff” was the name of one of my playlists. I renamed the playlist to “Beep”, which Alexa reliably gets right.

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New for 2016: The Echo now comes in both black and white so you can experience more choice paralysis in your life.

Now, as far as being a speaker goes, the Echo is just okay. It’s better at low and medium volumes than it is at high volume. I use mine for listening to “chillout” / “relaxation” type stuff before I fall asleep or in the morning before getting out of bed, and for that, it’s perfect. Virtually any similarly priced speaker from Bose, Sonos, or similar will sound better than the Echo does, but you don’t get all the cool voice control stuff.

However, Amazon has a solution to this. It’s called…

Amazon Echo Dot

Amazon Echo Dot turns any speaker into a Spotify Connect capable speaker. It’s also back in stock starting October 20, 2016, after selling like a heap of hotcakes this spring.

The Dot listens for your requests just like an Echo, and instead of using its own built-in speaker (which it has, but it’s pretty poor quality for music), it pipes the audio into the (much better) speaker you’ve plugged into it. The only “catch” here is that the speaker hooked up to the Dot has to be turned on.

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Also new: you no longer have to already own an Echo in order to get a Dot – you can order a Dot directly from Amazon.com.

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Dot also comes in both black and white now!

Awesome speakers on your computer itself

If you spend a lot of time on your computer (and keep it on a lot) like I do, you might like having a good set of speakers on your computer itself. As long as my computer is turned on and Spotify is open (which is almost always true), I can stream Spotify music through my PC’s speakers from any instance of the Spotify app.

Yes, this means I can be nowhere near my computer, controlling the music coming out of it via the Spotify app on my phone. (This is also great when I realized I left my computer playing music in the other room and don’t want to get up to turn it off. Apparently, I am that lazy. Also, we have a new baby, so little conveniences like this really add up.)

Attached to my computer are a slightly older version of the highly-rated Bose Companion 2 Series III Multimedia Speakers. These are the PC speakers I recommend to everyone who asks because:

  • the sound quality is incredible
  • they’re reasonably priced
  • they don’t take up a lot of desk space
  • you can plug your headphones right into the front of the right speaker without getting out of your chair

The sound quality way better than a few larger speaker sets I’ve owned that came with more speakers and a subwoofer.The headphone port is in a convenient place, too, not on some “pod” that’s easy to lose track of or on the back of the speaker. I’m still using these Bose “TriPort” headphones (mine are of 2006 vintage, they’re immortal), and when one of my favorite bands puts out a new album, these speakers are what I first hear it on.

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Why use Spotify Connect over WiFi instead of playing through Bluetooth?

When you play music to a speaker over Bluetooth, the sound quality is worse and you’re restricted to having to stay near the Bluetooth speaker you’re playing to. If you go too far or put the phone in your pocket, the signal quality is degraded or drops entirely. If you open a YouTube link, get a phone call, or something autoplays on Facebook, your music-over-Bluetooth stops and you get your (possibly accidental) audio instead.

Basically, streaming over WiFi is just a better overall experience, but you will still appreciate Bluetooth connectivity if you want to take your device and your phone outside of WiFi range. (In that case, I hope you have a good data plan or your carrier lets you stream Spotify for free, because streaming over wireless data is usually less than ideal.)

The bottom line

I love playing music to any speaker in my home with Spotify Connect, and I love all the conveniences of switching which speaker is currently receiving the stream. Streaming has largely replaced playing over Bluetooth for me, and it’s an all-around better experience.

Amazon Echo Dot is BACK! October release date, new color, and more!

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The Echo Dot is coming back in October, woohoo!

The Echo Dot is available for pre-order through Amazon.com, with an expected ship date of October 20, 2016. Now you can have an Echo in every room, without having to actually buy an Echo for every room. You can buy 3 Dots for less than the cost of one Echo.

The Dot sold out quickly last spring, and this is the first hint of its return. Considering how fast it flew off the virtual shelves when it was introduced, the Dot will probably sell out again. Hopefully, Amazon has a bigger heap of these things ready to go than they did last time.

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It’s back! And it’s got a lower price tag!

These new Dots, branded “2nd Generation”, are mechanically identical to 1st gen Dots except for a white color option and a lower price. A white Echo is being added to the lineup, too, with an earlier release date of September 28, 2016.

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Get excited! The Echo and Dot now come in both black and white.

Here’s a quick rundown on the Dot:

What’s so great about Dot?

  • All the same functionality of an Echo. Like Echo, Dot is always listening for your commands and responds to you audibly.
  • Cheaper than buying another Echo 
  • Hook it up to a better speaker (such as one of our favorites, the Bose SoundLink) to give that speaker Alexa capabilities and stream music through it over Bluetooth or WiFi
  • Add Alexa functionality to every room of your house

If you’re reading this, it’s probably because you love your Echo and want more of it. The Dot is like getting more Echoes but for cheaper, and the tradeoff is the speaker isn’t as good. The Dot’s speaker is kind of like the speaker on your phone. However, unlike the Echo, you can plug the Dot into any better speaker, and this Voltron-like combination of powers might make Dot + Your Really Good Speaker a better deal for you than a single Echo.

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Pictured speakers, left to right: Sonos Play 3, Bose SoundLink Mini II, Bose SoundLink Color (these are all great speakers!)

What’s new in the 2nd generation Echo Dot?

  • Lower price!
  • This pre-order is open to everyone! This time around, the Dot can be ordered directly through Amazon.com, by anyone. The previous Dot was only ordered through an existing Echo and there was a stricter limit on the number that could be purchased by a single buyer.
  • White color option 
  • It’s actually available for purchase 😀

The 2nd generation Echo Dot has the same internals as the 1st generation version.

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Echo Dot, now with the burden of having to choose which color you want.

Echo Dot Bundle Deals

Amazon’s got some sweet bundle deals for the Dot this time around.

Dot bundle deals

You can buy 5 Dots and get the 6th one free, thanks to a bundle deal currently offered by Amazon. (There is also a “buy 10 get 12 free” deal, which is basically the same thing but Amazon is currently restricting buyers to one multipack per customer.) If you have a big place or multiple places, or some cooperative friends, this is an awesome deal.

Don’t forget to enter the promo code when you complete your Amazon order: DOT6PACK or DOT12PACK

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This release of the Dot comes with two bundle deals: buy 5 – get 1 free or buy 10 -get 2 free

What goes well with the Echo Dot?

When the return of the Dot was first made known on Amazon, Amazon was also offering some sweet Dot + other thing deals. Amazon has since discontinued these bundle deals.

Here are some things that I think go well with a Dot.

Hue Philips Starter Kit (3 rainbow bulbs and a hub)

What could be lazier better than telling your lights to turn on or off with just your voice? “Alexa, turn the lights on” is probably the first words our baby will learn because we say it so much around here. The Philips Hue starter kit comes with 3 rainbow bulbs and a hub.

Put the Hue kit and the Echo Dot on the same network and boom – you’ve got voice controlled lights. If you aren’t convinced, check out our detailed Hue Philips Starter Kit review here (we love this lighting system so much, we’ve got it in both our apartment and our weekend place).

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Bose SoundLink Mini II

Something the Dot is good for is turning your Bluetooth or WiFi speaker into a voice-controlled speaker. The Echo and the Tap only have so-so speakers, but if you want the best of both worlds (voice control over an awesome speaker), grab something like the Bose SoundLink Mini II to go with your Dot.

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Make any speaker into an Alexa-powered speaker with the Dot.

This speaker is incredible, especially for its size. I’ve had my SoundLink Mini for a couple years now and it’s such a versatile, powerful speaker. I highly recommend it to anyone wondering which speaker to pair with a Dot. The SoundLink mini isn’t WiFi by default, but paired with a Dot, it can be. This means you can stream music over WiFi to it (such as through Spotify Connect), which offers better sound quality and connectivity over streaming through Bluetooth.

My “mini” is currently acting as a soundbar for my TV, but when I travel or head down to the rec room I take it with me thanks to its small size and awesome sound quality.

The bottom line

The Echo Dot is back and better than ever! Go get yours before they sell out!

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Review: Keystone KSTAP14B portable AC kept us cool during Seattle’s 2016 heatwave

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Last updated: 8/26/2016

Our Keystone KSTAP14B portable AC rating: 4.5/5

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It’s roasting here in Seattle, Keystone portable AC saved us from melting

It’s HOT here in Seattle, but our Keystone KSTAP14B portable AC unit arrived just in time for yet another 90 degree day.

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It’s about the size of a mini fridge and it vents hot air out your nearest window while expelling cold air into the room. Depending on your room size, it maintains anywhere from -6 degrees to -15 degrees difference from the ambient temperature of your home. How fast it does it also depends on the room size, but you should feel a difference within 10 minutes in a bedroom-size room and in about 25 mins in a bigger room.

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Pros

There’s a lot to love with the Keystone portable AC:

  • It’s portable! Or at least, relatively easy to move around compared with other styles of air conditioners thanks to its wheels and upright design. (However, at ~80 lbs, it is not a travel air conditioner.)
  • Cools a bedroom fast and effectively
  • About as loud as a box fan on high, and the noise is smooth and consistent so I found it easy to sleep in the same room
  • It has a remote! And that remote has all the same buttons as the AC unit itself
  • Caster wheels for easy re-positioning
  • Flexible exhaust tube is generously long, ~6 feet total
  • Runs on normal 115V outlet (just be careful not to run too many other things on the same circuit, it does take most of the circuit’s power)
  • No water pan to empty (on AC mode and fan mode; dehumidifier mode requires some emptying)
  • No protrusion from the window, so it looks nice from the outside
  • Washable mesh filter
  • Programmable 24-hour on/off timer so you can set it up to cool your place before you get home
  • Move it from room to room in under 10 minutes, like you might a box fan, since you have to redo the window kit. We moved it from our living room to our bedroom at nighttime, though, and we had the whole thing up and running again in about 8 minutes.

Here’s a video showing how it doesn’t “cycle” or rattle or sound annoying like a lot of in-wall AC units do.

Cons

  • Heavy! But this is true of any portable AC unit
  • Included window kit only works with windows that slide sideways or up and down
  • Exhaust hose is very warm, countering some of the cooling effect. I wish it came with better insulation (supposedly you can get an insulated sleeve for it)
  • At 48″, the included window kit isn’t quite tall enough for our windows (we solved this with a piece of cardboard)
  • Adjusting the temp makes it beep, which might not be ideal in the middle of the night

Here’s a video I made of how the beeping sounds when you change the temp or mode:

Where it really shines

Bedrooms

Even though it’s been somewhere between 77-84 degrees in the rest of our apartment as we went to bed every night this week, the AC unit brought the bedroom temp down to 65 and kept it down there until the daylight heat returned.

It’s the difference between sleeping uncovered and uncomfortable vs. cozying up under an actual blanket and not feeling like the other person in the bed is trying to roast you with their body heat.

The AC unit is about as loud as a box fan running on high. If you can sleep through a hotel air conditioner, you can sleep through the Keystone. We are used to sleeping with white noise and box fans, so this wasn’t a big deal for us, but people used to sleeping in silence may find it loud. It’s a consistent loud, though – it doesn’t cycle or stutter like hotel air conditioners and some window air conditioners. It just runs steady, and that makes all the difference in terms of this AC unit’s “sleepability”, in my opinion.

Apartments

This AC is basically designed for small spaces. It did pretty well in our 500 sq. foot living room/kitchen (we live in a 1 bedroom apartment now), though not as well as it does in the bedroom. We’ll tolerate a warm living room as long as there’s a nice, cool bedroom waiting for us at bedtime, so putting the AC in the bedroom made more sense for us.

Is it worth it for a Seattle apartment? We think so. I don’t know who convinced Seattle builders that we don’t need air conditioning in our homes here, but July – September can be brutal (and 2016 was one such year). We see lots of window ACs and exhaust tubes in windows around our neighborhood, so it’s not just us being wusses about the heat.

That room that never gets cool enough even though you have central air

Even in homes with central air, I could see this being useful for lofts or rooms that just never get cool enough. A lot of two-story homes struggle to get the 2nd floor bedrooms and living spaces cool enough in the hottest parts of summer. A portable air conditioner might save you having to move your mattress downstairs or staying out of that loft area you enjoy during the cooler months of the year.

Homes with strict community rules

Portable AC units are almost invisible from the outside. It doesn’t protrude from the window at all and its “in window” footprint is small. This should please your HOA, landlord, or busybody neighbors.

No DIY required

Just plug it in and go – no holes to drill, no insulation to stuff into cracks, no wiring. Much better than some of the alternatives out there…

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Photo credit: uglyhousephotos.com

Keystone portable AC unboxing

The Keystone portable AC unit arrives in a large, two-piece cardboard box with a plastic strap holding the halves together. With the plastic strap removed, you can easily separate the two halves of the box, but you shouldn’t separate them until you’ve got the AC unit inside your home or apartment.

Heads up: it’s heavy

It’s about 80 lbs and pretty big so plan on wheeling it into your place and having a helper for stairs unless you are a muscle god.

Not much assembly required!

The exhaust tube and collar parts are on the top and separated from the AC unit itself with a block of packing Styrofoam. I expected to have to put a lot more fiddly bits together, but this is about as pre-assembled as Keystone could’ve made it.

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Lift them out and remove the Styrofoam  here’s the AC unit itself. Fortunately, you don’t have to lift the AC unit out of the box or cut the box off from around it. The box is already in two parts, so all you do is lift the cardboard box up and the unit is left sitting on the other half of the box.

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The AC unit is on casters, so it’s (relatively) easy to wheel it into place once you’ve unboxed it.

Keystone AC on-unit controls

You can operate the Keystone AC with the remote or the on-unit controls. They’re pretty self explanatory, but some notable things here are Swing (which causes the lid to lift and lower so air isn’t just emitted straight out of the unit) and Sleep (which gradually shuts the unit off after 30 minutes).

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Remote

The “Follow Me” feature is a nice touch that separates this Keystone portable AC from some of the similarly priced competition. When it’s on and the remote is pointed at the unit, the remote sends a temperature reading to the mothership AC unit every 3 minutes.

This is a nice little touch that helps you get the room to the temperature you actually want it, not the temperature the AC unit thinks it is from a reading taken at the unit itself.

Other than that, the great thing about this remote is it duplicates all of the same buttons that exist on the unit itself (because the last thing anyone wants to do in this heat is get up again).

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Window kit appearance, dimensions

That plastic piece that holds the hose up to the window (the “window kit”) is, at minimum, 26.5″ tall. At maximum, with both pieces in position, it’s 48″ tall. You’ll need a window that slides horizontally or vertically to hold it in place. Our windows slide horizontally, so our kit is placed vertically.

Here’s what it looks like from the outside:

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Cost to run

This AC unit uses about 1580 watts as it runs. At 10 cents a kilowatt hour (your utility costs may vary), that works out to about $3.80 day to run it for 24 hours a day, which you probably won’t.

It’s probably closer to $1/day with typical use. (So worth it) 

How noisy is the Keystone portable AC unit?

As stated earlier in this review, it’s about as loud as a box fan running on high. However, it’s a consistent noise, a lot like a white noise machine might generate. It doesn’t cycle on/off like some AC units, beep, click, or anything annoying like that.

From the manufacturer:

  • 55 dBA on high (close to a dishwasher or clothes dryer)
  • 52 dBA on medium
  • 49 dBA on low

Why we chose Keystone over competitors

Basically, it had the best BTU to cost ratio we could find.

The more BTUs, the more powerful the AC. Our budget was firmly “under $500”, so we wanted the most bang for our buck. The reviews on Amazon were great and we were dying in this heatwave, so we ordered it and we love it!

The things that really sold us on the Keystone portable AC:

BTUs matter

Portable air conditioners vary in terms of BTU. Generally, the more BTUs, the more cooling power and the larger a room the AC unit is recommended for.

The Keystone KSTAP14B is rated at 14,000 BTUs, and the manufacturer states that this is suitable for a 700 sq. ft room. Meanwhile, this well-rated and less expensive EdgeStar model is rated at 12,000 BTUs, which doesn’t look like that much less until you see that the manufacturer only recommends it for a 425 sq. ft space. That’s a pretty big difference in the amount of space cooled, and it’s a pretty big difference in how effective two different AC units might be in the same room. We figured we were best off getting the most BTUs and beating back the heat with raw cooling power, and that strategy seems to have worked.

Generally speaking, portable AC manufacturers pair these BTU ratings with these sq. footage recommendations:

  • 14,000 BTU : 700 sq. feet
  • 12,000 BTU : 425 sq. feet
  • 8,000 – 10,000 BTU : 350 sq. feet
  • 5,000 BTU : 150 sq. feet

Keystone KSTAP14A vs. Keystone KSTAP14B

Shopping around a bit will reveal that there are two Keystone models with similar names. The only difference as far as we can tell is the body styling; the A looks straight out of the 80’s and the B has a sleeker body design. The rest is the same.

The bottom line

Summer 2016 in Seattle shall be remembered for its hot, record-breaking heat. I’m also 9 months pregnant as I write this, so this summer has already felt like trying to medal in the misery Olympics. I hadn’t had a decent night of sleep in over a month when the Keystone KSTAP14B portable air conditioner arrived and transformed our ability to sleep through the night. You can’t go wrong with this AC unit!

» See the Keystone KSTAP14B on Amazon.com «

Review: Wacom Intuos Pro is a professional tool at an affordable price

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Last updated: 8/24/2016

Our Wacom Intuos Pro (small) rating: 5/5

stars_5

Wacom makes the best tablets in the industry; this is yet another one

I got a new tablet! This review is specifically for Wacom’s latest Intuos model, the Wacom Intuos Pro.

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How I use a Wacom tablet

I use my tablet almost exclusively for illustration and digital painting in Photoshop. 

If you want to use an affordable, professional grade tablet to draw, color, or paint on your computer, this review is for you!

Wacom Intuos Pro (small size) features

  • Ambidextrous design – the buttons can be on the left or the right
  • Wired or wireless! Charge the battery during wired use, then go wireless
  • 6 customizable hotkeys
  • 1 big touch ring – slide to smoothly adjust brush size or zoom level
  • Small size is plenty big, fits in lap or on desk

Things it won’t do:

  • Teach you color theory, anatomy, lighting, etc
  • Put in the thousands of hours of practice it takes to be a decent artist

(Just throwing those last two out there, since a lot of people seem to think having a tablet automatically makes you a way better artist. Boy, I wish…)

My particular tablet is a “certified refurbished” model from Amazon, but it hasn’t got a scratch on it, smells brand new, and came packaged in all the plastic wrap and twist ties you’d expect in a new tablet. I’m suspicious as to whether it’s actually seen any use at all.

Unboxing the Wacom Intuos Pro

Wacom Intuos Pro comes in a nice cardboard box with a plastic carrying handle. I doubt it’s intended to be like, a regular tote for the tablet, but it’s a nice touch that gives the product a more upscale presentation and keeps it safe during transit.

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Inside the box: 

  • Wacom Intuos Pro tablet
  • Wacom Intuos Pro pen
  • Pen holder
  • Extra plastic pen nibs (inside the pen holder)
  • Micro USB cord
  • Battery (this goes in the tablet itself)
  • Wireless adapter (this goes in the tablet itself to enable wireless use)
  • USB Bluetooth dongle (for using the tablet wirelessly)
  • Startup booklet and CD
  • Three extra little plastic rings for customizing your pen (white, grey, red)
  • A postcard (that black “Welcome” rectangle is actually a postcard)

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Below: the Wacom Intuos Pro in “small” size. I think the small size is plenty big, even though I’ve owned and used the “medium” size.

You can orient the tablet either way (buttons on left or right). If you remember the buttons-on-both-sides design of the Intuos 3, you’ll notice your hand now gets to rest on a smooth (not button) surface.

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Unlike earlier Wacom models, the USB cord is now detachable.

Intuos small vs. medium size

If you’re debating a small Wacom vs. a medium Wacom, here’s my opinion: I think Wacom’s medium size tablet (the entire thing is 14.9″ x 9.9″) is unnecessarily big, and I think the largest Intuos Pro size is just crazy overkill huge.

Reasons why I like the smallest tablet size:

  • It’s easier to make space for on your desk or in your lap
  • Larger tablets require broader motions, which become tiring after hours and hours of drawing/painting
  • You can zoom into your digital canvas for more precision, you don’t need more physical real estate to get more precision
  • It’s the most affordable

Don’t believe anyone who tells you bigger size = more professional; I’ve worked as an artist and in offices with dozens of artists, and the vast majority happily used the small size Wacom (some had Cintiqs).

Sure, get a bigger size if you really want it and are confident it’s right for you, but I don’t think you’ll feel constricted by the small size.

How it feels

The drawing surface is awesome: slick and smooth with no skips or lag. Wacom has always made quality tablets so there’s no surprise that the pen responsiveness is spot-on.

The real difference between this tablet and its predecessors (and other tablets in Wacom’s lineup) are the customizable hot buttons down the side of the tablet. I work so much faster with my buttons set up the way I like them, because I can hold the tablet with my left and right hand and never waste time lifting my arm to the keyboard. This is also much easier on my shoulders and upper back, which are prone to repetitive stress pain if I sag my left hand over the keyboard for hours on end.

Configuring the Wacom Intuos Pro

You can configure the tablet, pen, and button shortcuts on a per-application basis. If you plan to use your new Wacom with Photoshop, hit the + button on the right and add Photoshop as an application, then do your customization there.

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Most of these settings are self-explanatory and everyone kind of has their own preferences, so try a variety of mappings if you aren’t sure what you like. I like to map the rocker button on the pen to “i” and “b” so I can sample a color from my canvas (i) and switch back to brush (b) quickly in Photoshop. I like to map the wheel to [ and ], which decrease and increase the brush size in Photoshop, respectively.

My Wacom history

I got my first Wacom in 2003 (Intuos 2), my second one in 2007 (Intuos 3), and the Pro is my third Wacom tablet. The 2 got passed on to my sister and the 3 is still going strong (I now use it at my weekend place).

All of my Wacom tablets survived years of heavy use. The plastic nibs have worn out but the surface and tablet hardware itself have remained strong, and Wacom has continued to support (with drivers) even my oldest tablet. Because of this, I’m convinced Wacom tablets are more or less immortal, and I feel confident buying yet another one from their brand.

Why I don’t recommend Cintiq 

Research Wacom tablets long enough and you’re bound to feel tempted by the Cintiq, a large monitor/tablet-in-one. The appeal, of course, is that you don’t experience the separation of hand from “canvas” with a Cintiq like you do with an ordinary tablet.

 

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Some people swear by them, but I’m not one of those people.

  • A sharp pain developed in my upper back and no matter how I positioned it, the pain persisted and worsened
  • I didn’t like my hand blocking my work
  • I felt guilty about “using it up” any time I used it as a normal monitor for say, gaming or writing
  • It was heavy (newer models are lighter) but I only have an IKEA desk and I was convinced I’d come home to find my expensive Cintiq on the floor surrounded by a pile of particleboard
  • I couldn’t bring it anywhere with me

Basically, the Cintiq felt like a step back from the small, comfortable Intuos tablets I can place in my lap and bring with me. This is why I don’t really recommend Cintiq. Your mileage may vary, but if you’re curious, most of the professional artists I know and have worked with are content to work on an Intuos.

If you’re in the Seattle area and wondering what to do with all the cash you saved getting an Intuos over a Cintiq, go to a TLC Workshop – these workshops are awesome and well worth the money!

Wacom’s new Intuos naming scheme

The first thing I noticed when shopping for my next tablet was that Wacom now offers a bewildering selection of entry level and mid range tablets.

These “entry level” tablets are the Intuos Draw, Intuos Art, Intuos Photo, and Intuos Comic. Prices vary because their feature sets and bundled software vary by tablet. They feature a dotted black drawing surface and four buttons at the top:

wacom_intuos_draw_photo_comic

Wacom really diluted their line with these tablets, which I think mostly serve to confuse potential customers and add more research time to a Wacom purchase.

Even though these tablets are marketed towards a particular purpose (“draw anime!”, “edit photos!”), you’re not actually going to be limited to “just drawing” or “just photo editing” if you choose one of these tablets over another.

If you already have the software you want to use and you want to get one of these tablets, just buy based on color or features (such as the Intuos Art’s touch feature).

Intuos Pro vs. Intuos Draw, Intuos Art, etc

These are cute, but I think most artists will outgrow them quickly. If you intend to use your tablet regularly, it’s worth the extra cost to get an Intuos Pro.

Here’s why:

  • The Intuos Draw, Art, etc buttons are in an awkward location near the top. Also, you only get 2 per side, not six like you do with the Pro.
  • There’s no touch wheel on these lower end tablets, and the touch wheel is awesome. You can map the touch wheel to a number of things, including brush size adjustment, which I’d be really lost without.
  • The bundled software doesn’t do much for me either, since I use Photoshop. I think it’s better to buy an Intuos and then buy whatever software you want to use with it.

Artist Aaron Rutten has an excellent 5 minute video comparing these tablets, which is where I learned enough to know that I wanted a Pro instead.

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If you really need the cheapest tablet imaginable, go with the Wacom Intuos Draw.

wacom_intuos_draw

This is the tablet I’d get for someone if you aren’t sure that person will actually stick with a digital art hobby and just wants to give it a try. I’d definitely consider this tablet for a kid or a pre-teen. After all, it’s hard to argue with that price.

If your ambition is to become a professional artist, though, and you’re already working towards that goal and/or are in art school, I think it’s worth it to invest in the better tool and get the Intuos Pro instead.

Who should get a Wacom tablet

If you think you’d be better/faster with a tablet, you should seriously consider getting one. Illustrators, cartoonists, animators, photographers doing retouching by mouse would all benefit from a tablet.

I rarely use my tablet for “layout” work (like, I don’t use it if I’m making a mockup of what a website might look like) but I do use it for anything I would otherwise freehand.

My tablet completely replaced my old “draw on paper then scan” workflow, which was nice – saved me a lot of paper, pencils, eraser dust all over the place, and let me get rid of my scanner.

The bottom line

The Intuos Pro is awesome; I’m thrilled with it and happily using it to sketch and paint in Photoshop. This tablet is the best of Wacom’s current offerings: a step up from their low-end Intuos line (Intuos Draw, Art, Comic, Photo) in all the right ways, but not bank-breaker like the Cintiq.

If budget is a concern, check out Amazon’s refurbished version of the Wacom Intuos Pro. Mine came packed just like it was new from the factory and has no signs of use.

» See the Wacom Intuos Pro on Amazon.com «

Wacom Intuos Pro – Small

Wacom Intuos Pro – Medium

Wacom Intuos Pro – Large

Bose SoundLink Color packs sweet bass into a small package

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Last updated: 8/2/2016

Our Bose SoundLink Color rating: 5/5

stars_5

2 years later, it’s still the best entry level Bluetooth speaker on the market

Bose SoundLink Color Bluetooth speaker in blackIt’s nearly 2 years old, but my family’s Bose SoundLink Color Bluetooth speaker is still going strong. It’s still the Bluetooth speaker I recommend to anyone looking for a high quality, under $150 Bluetooth speaker.

You can use it over Bluetooth or directly jacked into your phone via the headphones cable (“AUX in”). It’s also a far better speaker than the Amazon Tap (see our comparison here) if sound quality is your top priority.

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My top 3 priorities when evaluating a Bluetooth speaker:

  1. Sound quality at a reasonably loud volume (this includes richness of bass, which a lot of speakers suck at)
  2. Ease of connectivity and ability to stay connected and remember my device
  3. On-unit controls and ease of control via the actual speaker body

And, to a lesser extent, portability.

Bose SoundLink Color Review

10 years ago, you’d spend a couple hundred dollars on a wired speaker system to get the kind of sound the Color makes out of its portable plastic body. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing when I first tried this speaker in the Bose store.

Before getting the Color, I listened to music either at my computer with my 5.1 surround sound speaker system or through my Bose TriPort over-ear headphones (which are apparently immortal – I got these in 2004 and I still think they’re awesome).

Once I had a Color, though, I started bringing my music everywhere.

Audio quality

Bass and lows

The thing I always notice with speakers is how good or lacking the bass is. Some people don’t seem to mind when 1/3rd of their song is basically missing due to weak bass, but I notice, and it makes me unhappy to hear my favorite songs spoiled by a hollow-sounding speaker.

The Bose SoundLink Color has excellent bass, especially for its price range. No other speaker I’ve tried in the $80-$150 price range comes close. With the volume up, I can hear it thumping from another room, but it’s not unbalanced – it doesn’t clip or drown out the rest of the song.

Mids and highs

The rest of the song sounds great, too. Crystal clear with no clipping, even if I turn the volume up. On cheaper speakers, higher volumes sometimes make a “fuzz” sound when you crank it up. That’s called “clipping”, and it’s because some aspect of the music you’re playing is outside the range the speaker is capable of producing.

Overall, I would describe songs as having a “warmth” to them when played through my Bose SoundLink Color. That same warmth is absent in the Amazon Tap speaker and the popular (and significantly cheaper) Cambridge SoundWorks OontZ Angle.

Ease of connectivity

If you’ve ever struggled to connect over Bluetooth, you know how connectivity problems can ruin an otherwise cool device. My Color speaker has had several devices paired to it (a couple of iPhones, one Android phone, and a Macbook) but it hasn’t “forgotten” devices or gotten stuck in that frustrating state where it just won’t pair with something.

According to Bose, the speaker remembers up to eight devices. It can also connect to two different Bluetooth devices at the same time, so you can switch between them quickly.

If you have an MP3 player or similar without Bluetooth (like an older iPod) you can still connect to this speaker via an auxiliary cable. Just plug one end of the aux cable into the headphones jack on your device, and the other end into the aux port on the back of the Bose SoundLink Color, and switch the Color to AUX mode via the “AUX” button on top.

aux_cable

On-unit controls

There are six buttons across the top:

  • Power
  • Bluetooth (for pairing setup)
  • AUX (switch to cable input)
  • Play/pause
  • Volume up/down (hold to go forwards/backwards in playlist)

bose_soundlink_color_top_buttons

Yes, you can control the song selection and volume from your device, but having the controls on the unit is important, too. Sometimes you just don’t want to find or turn on your phone screen. Even if you’re near both the speaker and your phone, it’s often easier to just reach over and adjust the volume or the song selection by pressing the on-unit buttons.

However, you don’t have to use the on-unit buttons once you’re past the pairing step, so if you put it out of reach or your mobility is limited, you can do volume/song control from your phone.

Below: iPhone 6 leaning up against the Bose Color.

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Battery Life

The Color goes for 8-9 hours easily; I’ve run it overnight not plugged in and found it still going when I wake up.

Watch out for… 

The built-in lithium ion battery isn’t replaceable by the consumer, and it’s said to get about 300 charges before you have to send it to Bose for replacement (and you get a refurb unit, not yours back).

This kind of sucks, but it’s par for the course with many modern rechargeable electronics. You won’t find something better with a different speaker. If you run the Color on A/C power when convenient to do so, you can preserve battery cycles for when you really need them.

Convenient size and portability

Here’s a photo of the Color in my hand (I’m 5’8″):

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It weighs about a pound. Because of its height, it’s a little bit more tipping-prone than its squatter, slightly more expensive sibling, the Bose SoundLink Mini, but the Color is also rugged enough to survive a few tumbles and smooth enough to not damage anything else in the process.

A variety of carrying cases and wraps are available for the Color. I don’t have one of these because I usually just bundle it up in some clothing inside my duffel bag and then set it somewhere safe when I use it, but these cases are pretty cheap and look nice. If you think you’ll carry your Color around a lot, it’s probably worth the few extra dollars to buy one.

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Something you probably won’t want to do with the Bose Color is clip it onto your bag or bicycle like you might with an Amazon Tap. It’s not really designed to dangle and swing, and the cases on the market for the Color don’t really offer a hook or strap for the purpose.

The Amazon Tap, while an inferior speaker, is more designed for that kind of portability. The trade-off, of course, is sound quality (and yes, there is a very, very big difference in sound quality between the Color and the Tap).

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Charging the Bose SoundLink Color

An AC adapter is included. The Color can play music while charging, even if the battery is totally dead. I recommend plugging into AC power whenever possible to preserve battery cycles (you get about 300).

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What’s in the box

  • Bose SoundLink Color speaker
  • Micro USB cable for charging
  • AC wall adapter

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Color options

As of mid-2016, the Bose SoundLink Color comes in mint, red, black, blue, and white. For whatever it’s worth I like my black one, and it doesn’t show dust as much as I thought it might.

Clicking the image below will take you to Amazon’s current stock of these various colors.

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Bose SoundLink Color vs. Bose SoundLink Mini II

I own both a Bose SoundLink Color and a Bose SoundLink Mini. They’re priced about $70 apart (MSRP) but they have essentially the same features. The Color has voice-assisted pairing, which is nice (and it’s fun to hear the robo voice pronounce your phone’s name), but that’s the only major difference in the user experience and controls.

The Mini has a richer sound, especially at louder volumes, but for casual, lower volume listening within 10 feet of the speaker it’s hard to tell the difference between them. If you’re hoping to fill a larger room or a backyard with music, the Mini might be a better choice.

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Some more reasons you might choose a SoundLink Mini over a Color:

  • Richer sound, including deeper bass that is better at filling a room
  • Charging cradle makes it a little faster to pop the unit off the base and go (you can also plug the AC adapter directly into the Mini’s body, skipping the cradle altogether)
  • Shorter body design is less likely to tip over
  • Metal body design feels higher quality than Color’s plastic body

It’s kind of hard to pick between them, really – they’re both great speakers. I use my SoundLink Mini as a soundbar for my TV a lot these days since my voice-controlled Amazon Echo has taken over my casual background music needs.

Bose SoundLink Color vs. Amazon Tap

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I recently wrote a detailed comparison of the Bose Color vs. the Amazon Tap, but the TL;DR of it is that the Color is a significantly better speaker. The Tap cannot compete on richness – the bass is all but absent and it gets a little fuzzy at high volume.

I almost sent my Tap back when I first heard it, that’s how much Bose spoiled me, but I kept it around as a computer speaker / white noise maker for when I travel.

Bose SoundLink Color vs. Amazon Echo

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Speaking strictly as speaker vs. speaker, the Color is the better choice over the Echo. But you don’t get an Echo just to have it be a speaker, you get it for all the other stuff it can do, too.

I’ve come to rely on the home automation features (“Alexa, turn the lights off”) and use them daily; and because it’s easy to activate, my Echo is often used to play music, too (“Alexa, play playlist Chillout from Spotify”). I don’t really use the Echo for those times when I really want to listen to music, but for background sound (I live in a city, it’s nice to have something soft playing in the background) the Echo is great.

The bottom line

The Bose SoundLink Color has been on the market for nearly 2 years, but it’s still the top pick for its price bracket. Its sound quality remains unchallenged by newcomers like the Amazon Echo and Tap. Bose offers better Bluetooth speakers for more $$$, but the Color is plenty capable as-is. You won’t regret getting the “bottom tier” model if you choose a Color and I think we’re unlikely to see a major product refresh from any of these speaker lines before the end of the year. Grab one and enjoy!

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» Check Amazon.com for current price and more buyer reviews «

Best router 2016: ASUS (RT-AC68U) Wireless-AC1900 Dual-Band Gigabit Router is an unstoppable WiFi beast

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Last updated: 7/26/2016

Our Asus RT-AC680 router rating:

stars_5

It’s awesome! Easy setup and 3 bars of WiFi everywhere, even in huge houses.

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Today we’re gonna look at our favorite router, the Asus RT-AC68U, also called the Asus Wireless-AC1900.

We got one for our house in January, both of ours parents got this router at our recommendation, and my sister and her techie husband also upgraded to this router this year.

Suffice to say, we’ve gotten pretty familiar with this router and we’re convinced it’s the best bang for your buck right now in wireless routers.

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Here’s why you might want to upgrade your router:

  • You have WiFi dead zones in your house
  • You’re not getting the speeds you should be (test your connection at speedtest.net) unless you’re right next to your existing router/modem
  • You have a lot of wireless devices on your network (say, 10 or more)
  • You want a guest network that exists in parallel to your real one, for guests to use without gaining access to the rest of your network
  • You have a bleeding-edge device or network card that supports faster data speeds than your current router supports
  • You’re tired of paying your ISP a monthly fee for a junky router

Asus AC68U Router Review

TL;DR: it’s excellent, we love it, and we recommend it to everyone who asks us for router recommendations.

If your home is home to a few laptops, desktop computers, a TV streaming device like Roku or Chromecast, a couple gaming consoles, a bunch of mobile phones, and perhaps a smart thermostat or Amazon Echo (like ours is), this is the router for you.

It’s the best balance of price and specs and won’t be obsolete anytime soon.

Asus AC68U Router Highlights

  • Outstanding range – the AC68U eliminated dead WiFi spots in and immediately outside of even the largest home we tried it in
  • Several on-router technologies to lock signal on devices and help certain kinds of traffic (like streaming TV shows) flow uninterrupted
  • Easy setup and user-friendly control panel – my 70-year-old dad breezed through it 😀
  • Supports PPTP VPN – log into your home computer from somewhere else (your workplace, your hotel, your phone, etc)
  • Adaptive QoS – prioritizes traffic and lets you see which device is using the bandwidth. You can also set priorities on devices – keep your PS4 high priority and Netflix lower priority, so TV gets buffered while gaming doesn’t get lagged
  • Awesome speeds – we get what our Internet provider promises, everywhere in our test houses
  • Web filtering – see what sites are accessed, block them if you want
  • Guest network – set up a separate network to give guests Internet access, but not access to your local network
  • NAS support – hook up a hard drive and access it from anywhere on your network and/or over VPN into your network
  • USB 3.0 support (good for NAS)
  • Web security – all the latest and greatest, plus regular firmware updates

Key specs

  • Wireless Type: 802.11ac/b/g/n
  • Wireless Speed: Up to 1900 mbps
  • Wireless Frequency: Dual-band (5GHz @ 802.11ac & 2.4 GHz @ 802.11n)
  • Wired Connectivity: 5 x LAN, 1x WAN gigabit Ethernet port
  • USB Ports: 1x USB 3.0, 1x USB 2.0
  • Warranty: 2 Years
  • Dimensions: 6.3″ long x 3.3″ wide x 8.6″ tall

What’s in a name?

The “AC-1900” refers to the router’s max bandwidth. You can get a connection at 1900 megabits per second (just a wee bit short of 2 gigabit/second) if you have the right hardware.

If you have a network card that supports it, it will combine the 802.11AC(1300Mbps over 5G) + 802.11N(600Mbps over 2.4G) signals to get your computer to 1900. If you don’t know what any of this means and you know your hardware is just average, you could save a few bucks and get the 1750 version of this router instead.

Homes we tested the Asus AC68U in

We have four of this router in our lives. They’re in:

  • a 3,300 sq ft two-story standalone home built in the 1980s (my parents’ home). The router is on the 2nd story at the far end of the house.
  • a 3,500 sq ft three-story standalone home built in the 1990s (my partner’s parents’ home). The router is on the first floor at a far corner of the house.
  • a 1,300 sq ft one-story attached ranch built in the 1990s with basement (my sister’s home). The router is on the only floor, at one end of the house.
  • another 1,300 sq ft one-story duplex ranch built in 2011 (our house). The router is on the only floor, located roughly centrally in the home.

These setups are not textbook ideal. Because of where the cable comes in, the two biggest homes in our sample have the router placed up against a wall at a far end of the house. Both of these houses (our parents’ houses) were notorious for dead zones in like 1/3rd of the house, dropped WiFi connections, weak WiFi connections, and lots of pausing/buffering while streaming before they upgraded to the Asus.

In my sister’s 1,300 sq ft home, the router is on the first floor (along an outside wall) but the computers and gaming systems are in the basement below. Even in this case, the WiFi signal is strong.

However, despite all these “less than perfect” setups, all four homes have a strong WiFi signal everywhere inside the houses and even some more signal out in the yard. That’s how awesome this router is.

These four houses vary in construction materials, broadband supplier, the number of WiFi networks nearby, and the demands placed on the network, but the signal strength is excellent in all four.

In short, this router is awesome for big houses, even if you can’t position it somewhere “ideal”. 

What’s in the box?

asus_rt_ac68u_in_box

  • Asus RT-AC68U dual-band gigabit router
  • Power cord
  • Ethernet cord
  • Setup booklet
  • Setup CD

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Router setup

It’s so fast and easy, I didn’t bother to document it. It’s like a 6-step wizard and the hardest part is naming your network (pick a good one – but just in case you don’t, you can easily change it later).

Regular security updates

Firmware updates come about once a month and contain security updates, bug fixes, UI improvements, and even new features like the recently-added traffic analyzer.

This regular support keeps the router up to date against newly discovered security vulnerabilities, and helps the router’s feature set stay competitive with new competitor models. Also great: Asus accepts bug fixes from the developer community, meaning there’s even more people scrutinizing the router’s capabilities and security features.

See some of the recent Asus 86 RT-AC86U firmware updates here.

Good control panel design

Once you’re all set up, visit 192.168.1.1 in your browser to access the control panel.

From here, you can view connected devices and their bandwidth usage, change the network’s name, password, and security type, and adjust a variety of settings.

I’ve managed a lot of routers over the years and this interface is definitely my favorite.

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Connected Devices (“Clients”)

See a list of all currently connected devices.

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Guest Network

Use the “guest network” feature to give your visitors an “Internet only” version of your network. This is an excellent security feature, as it lets your guests surf the web without also getting access to any computers, files, or equipment you might have otherwise have available over the network.

Traffic by app, traffic by client

This is another cool feature of the Asus RT-AC86U: use it to see where your bandwidth goes, by app and by client (user).

asus_rt_ac68u_traffic_by_app asus_rt_ac68u_traffic_by_client

PPTP VPN

One of the biggest reasons we chose the Asus RT-86U over its competitors was for the PPTP VPN connection capabilities.

With Open VPN (which is what a lot of competitor models have) you need third party software to log into your network (which may or may not be available for your OS).  With PPTP VPN, the VPN software is basically in the router’s OS, and you can VPN in from anything (your Android phone, your Macbook, etc), with no need for third party software.

If you’re never going to use VPN, this probably isn’t something you care about, but if you’re hoping to make use of VPN, this is a great feature to have at your disposal.

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Asus AC1900 vs. the Asus AC1750

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You might have noticed there’s a “1750” version of this router, also called the Asus RT-AC66U. They look pretty similar: same black plaid body, three antenna, same ports in the back.

What’s the difference?

The only real difference between the 1900 and the 1750 is the maximum possible throughput. As explained earlier in this review, the only devices that hit the full 1900 throughout are those that can combine the two separate signals – 802.11AC(1300Mbps over 5G) and 802.11N(600Mbps over 2.4G) to make 190Mbps.

We found only a negligible price difference between the 1900 and the 1750 when we were router shopping, so we went with the 1900 to be a bit more future-proof with our purchase.

Asus AC1900 vs. Netgear AC1750

Astute readers might recall that we have a Netgear AC1750 in our city apartment. The Netgear AC1750 is still an excellent router. The only reason we chose the Asus AC1900 over another one for the house (which is 100 miles away and we only get to on weekends and holidays) was for the Asus’s stronger VPN support, which we use regularly.

Why buy a router when you can lease one from your cable company?

You might already be leasing your router from your cable company (it might even be the kind of device that’s both router and modem in one). Maybe that’s working for you, but you might be having one or more of the following problems:

  • WiFi dead zones in your house
  • intermittent loss of WiFi signal to devices
  • interruptions to streaming (pauses in Netflix, lots of YouTube buffering)
  • disconnects during online gaming
  • interference from other networks and/or Bluetooth devices
  • a pang of regret every month as you pay another $10 towards renting a device when you could buy a much better one

Just a few years ago, the only people who really wanted or benefitted from a better router than the one you could lease from your cable company were gamers and people pirating media by the truckload. Nowadays, everyone and their mother is streaming, gaming, and surfing the web simultaneously on one home network.

If you’re in a heavy use household, and you have any of the above problems, then a better router would probably make a big difference. You’ll also get features like traffic analyzer, the ability to prioritize certain types of traffic higher than other types, parental controls – all features that are usually absent from ISP-provided routers.

Some important things to keep in mind

These things are true about any router, not just this one.

Your download speeds are still limited by your Internet connection

It’s not going to turn your crappy rural DSL into a blindingly fast downloading machine, but it will make the most of what you give it and spread it far and wide.

Upgrading to wireless AC should cut down on interference

You might be familiar with the ever-changing alphabet soup of router letters. For a while, it was wireless B, then wireless G, wireless N, and now wireless AC.

AC is the newest technology, and it operates on the 5Ghz band. Most routers are still wireless N, which is on the 2.4Ghz band (as are Bluetooth devices). If you live in a dense area with loads of neighboring WiFi networks (or you make use of Bluetooth music players, keyboards, mice, etc in your home) you might see a big improvement in signal quality just from getting off the crowded spectrum.

Click here for a good rundown of the differences between wireless b, g, n, and ac.

Antenna orientation matters

As with any router, you’ll need to orient the antennas. They don’t “blast” signal out their tips – it’s more like they make a flat plane of signal that’s parallel to the antenna itself. When in doubt, point one straight up and one perpendicular to it (that is, parallel to the floor).

This short Lifehacker article explains ideal antenna orientation.

The bottom line

We put this router through hell – we subjected it to online multiplayer gaming, streaming to a PSVita 100 miles away from its parent Playstation 4, streaming YouTube videos, huge downloads, and more (most of it simultaneously).

We ran speed tests all over our parents’ houses, both of which are over 3,000 sq. feet, and neither of which have the router in an “ideal” location (both just stuffed it up against the wall where the cable came in), and found little to no drop in signal strength.

This router is a beast, we totally <3 it – you can’t go wrong with this router!

» Check Amazon.com for current price and buyer reviews «

Altec Lansing IMW257-AB Mini H2O waterproof speaker is perfect for the pool, river tubing, the shower, rainy days…

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Last updated: 7/1/2016

Our Altec Lansing Mini H20 rating:

stars_4

Two weekends ago, we grabbed a little Altec Lansing Mini H20 waterproof bluetooth speaker on our way to river tubing with friends.

Total impulse buy – we didn’t expect a lot from it, but it’s fast becoming the star speaker of the summer. This little guy fills a niche our Amazon Tap and Bose Mini speakers don’t: it can get wet! It can also get dirty! And at just $40, it can go everywhere with us!

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Highlights

  • It’s everything-proof: water, sand, snow, drops and bumps
  • It floats!
  • Good sound and fairly loud
  • Strong metal “carabiner hook” for clipping it to things with a carabiner or lanyard
  • Micro USB charging
  • 3.5 oz weight makes it portable and light enough to wear
  • Speakerphone and microphone for taking phone calls out loud (we haven’t tried this feature)
  • AUX port for hooking the speaker up to your phone via its headphone jack (note: it’s not waterproof in this configuration)
  • Keep your fancy expensive speaker safe at home!

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In hand

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The top buttons allow you to control audio volume and navigate a playlist backwards and forwards (hold the – or + button)

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The bottom’s rubber flap covers the AUX port and the micro USB charge port.

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The bottom flap opens up for charging and AUX in

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A Little Waterproof Bluetooth Speaker that Goes Everywhere

Lanyard hook for the win

The speaker has a metal loop that you can hook a carabiner or lanyard to (neither is included). The speaker is light enough to wear around your neck or clip to a bag or bicycle.

This was great for river tubing, since getting in/out of the river usually fills your hands with important things like your inner tube and the copious amounts of alcohol you brought with.

Here’s ours in action:

antec_lansing_waterproof_speaker_review_on_lanyard

Loud and clear – for the most part

We brought the speaker to the pool, sat it on the edge near the deep end while we played around in the pool. The speaker was audible from the shallow end and could be heard over us splashing around. This speaker wouldn’t be sufficient for DJing your backyard summer bash, but it’s fine for creating a good volume of background music for a backyard swim or float.

The sound quality is better than we expected from this price range. Honestly, it’s not that much worse than the Amazon Tap speaker at low and medium volumes. Bass clipping is noticeable when you turn up the volume and play a bass-heavy song, but how bothersome this is varies by listeners. Hardcore audiophiles will cringe, your kids and grandparents won’t care.

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It can go for a swim!

Yes, it floats. No, it doesn’t float “speakers up”. It floats one-corner-up with its speakers underneath the water, so if it falls into the water you won’t hear it. The floating feature seems like it’s there to help you retrieve it if it gets knocked into the water (which beats swimming to the bottom or losing it in the river).

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6 hours of battery life, at least 

I’m impressed at how long this thing ran on a single charge. The manufacturer says 6 hours but I ran it for 6 and let idle for a week in between uses and it still has half its battery life left, according to my iPhone. The speaker uses Bluetooth 4, which allows the device it’s paired with (in this case, my phone) to display its remaining battery life.

Easy to pair, stays paired

We tested pairing this speaker with an Android phone and an iPhone 6 and both paired easily and stayed paired.

Comes in 6 colors!

We went with red so it would stand out against the pool, but the speaker also comes in black, white, blue, orange, and mint. (Amazon’s prices sometimes vary by color, so be sure to check them all).

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What would make it better?

For $40 this speaker is amazing. It’s hard to find much to complain about.

Only two minor gripes stand out:

It should come with a lanyard

The corner loop makes you think it’s going to come with one, and a lanyard goes a long way to improve its portability. The lack of a lanyard almost made us not buy it on our way to the river, but we were able to scrounge one up between the store and the river shore.

Built-in voice is kind of annoying

The built-in voice that announces successful Bluetooth connections, charging status, etc is very loud and tinny. I’d have been happy with beeps. On the bright side, at least you know what the speaker is doing when you plug it in, turn it on, turn it off, etc.

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If you need something bigger and more booming, check out the CB3 Armor XL Waterproof Rugged Wireless Bluetooth Speaker, which is one of the speakers we considered but didn’t go with because we wanted ours to be tiny enough to take river tubing with us. 

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The bottom line

If you’re looking for a durable, inexpensive waterproof speaker to accompany you on all your summer adventures, look no further than the Altec Lansing H20 Mini. 

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» Check Amazon.com for current price and more buyer reviews «

Sony VPLHW40-ES 1080p SXRD projector for super-size gaming, TV, and movies review

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We like our TV and gaming BIG and LOUD, and after dozens of hours of research, we decided the Sony VPLHW40-ES was a bad enough dude for the job.

Our Sony VPLHW40-ES Home Theater Projector rating:

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Fantastic picture at a home theater friendly price! 5/5 stars!

If you’re in the market for a spectacular home theater projector and your budget is somewhere around $1600-2000, check out the Sony VPLHW40-ES. We’ve had this projector for 4 months and we just love it!

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In this review, I’ll show you why we chose the 40-ES over competitor models, how we set it up, and what’s best about it.

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» Check Amazon.com for current price and more buyer reviews «

Sony VPLHW40-ES features at a glance

  • SXRD (Silicon X-tal Reflective Display) – Sony’s “spin” on the 3LCD technology common to modern projectors is by many measures an improvement
  • No perceptible gaming lag 
  • 2 HDMI inputs – most competitor projectors in this price range just have 1 HDMI input
  • HDMI-CEC – Enables other devices, like a receiver or Playstation 4, to turn the projector on on their own
  • You can realign the panels – calibration grid, not available on all projectors. 3LCD projectors tend to drift out of alignment and you notice a black or white line and color seepage. With the Sony 40-ES, you can manually realign the panels instead of sending it in for service/repair
  • Lens shift for a greater range of possible projector positions – in this price range all projectors have some degree of lens shift, but the ES-40 has 25% horizontal and 70% vertical lens shift (so you can mount way higher than your screen, or off-center of your screen).
  • 3D – requires glasses, like these or these
  • “Low” lamp setting – extends lamp life about 3x and gives you better black levels with little to no sacrifice to picture quality
  • 1080p and can project up to about a 300″ screen (ours is 120″) – the smaller your screen, the sharper and brighter your image
  • Runs quiet 
  • Backlit remote! 

Sony VPLHW40-ES image examples – games, movies, cartoons

These photos were taken with my Samsung NX300 in a dark living room (windows covered by light-blocking curtains).

Video game

Below is Blizzard’s Overwatch at 120″ on our ES-40. The colors are rich and vibrant, and, even more importantly, the relatively small on-screen text and UI elements are clear and readable from the sofa 11 feet away.

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Live action movie: dark scenes

These two scenes from Pacific Rim demonstrate how the ES-40 is still really good at showing detail in dark scenes, both on complex objects and on human actors. It’s even more impressive when you take into account the tricky nature of photography in a scene with low lighting – these scenes looked even better in person.

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Live action movie: bright scenes

This scene from Mad Max shows the projector’s awesome capabilities at highly detailed well-lit scenes. This movie is pure eye candy to begin with and on this projector, it was like seeing it in theaters again.

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Cartoon

This scene from Rick and Morty shows that even cartoons look awesome when blown up by the ES-40 for a 120″ size screen.

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Things to know about projector image quality

The quality of image you perceive any projector to have depends on a number of factors, including

  • the projector itself – in general, the more you pay for a projector, the better an image you’ll get
  • the surface you are projecting onto – a screen’s gain level affects how bright the projected image appears (we project onto a Silver Ticket 120″ screen)
  • how much you’re using lens shift and stretching to fill your screen
  • the distance between your projector and screen
  • how far you sit from the screen

With our particular setup, everyone who has seen our ES-40 in action agrees the picture is stunning. In a dark room, it’s plenty bright on the “low” setting, and in a partially lit room, the “high” setting is more than enough to compensate. (We don’t really run the projector in broad daylight.)

When you’re buying a projector, you’re looking for that sweet spot where you get the best picture without spending more than your budget, whatever that may be. Every major projector brand has its own pluses and minuses when it comes to image quality, and we determined that the Sony ES-40 had the best balance of these factors. Now that it’s on the wall, we’re confident we made the right decision.

For us, the most important aspects of image quality were:

Be aware of the “color wheel rainbow” effect

Lower-end projectors use “color wheels” to produce their images. Color wheels “overlay” the image on themselves really quickly to produce all colors, but if you look left/right while it’s projecting you might see a rainbow flicker. A lot of projector owners are looking for ways to reduce this effect in projectors they already own, so we thought it’d be better to try to avoid it in the first place.

We wanted a projector that used 3-chip LCD technology instead. The ES-40 uses Sony’s own proprietary LCD technology that does not produce the rainbow effect.

And the “screen door” effect

Lower-end and mid-range projectors often have a visible “grid” in their projected image, known as the “screen door” effect. The ES-40 has a mild screen door effect, but it’s far less noticeable than less expensive projectors. At my workplace, for example, the conference room projectors have very obvious grids if you look closely.

On projectors where it’s noticeable, the screen door effect looks like this (not from the ES-40):

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Pay attention to black levels

Nobody likes seeing dim grey where they should see black. Generally speaking, more expensive projectors are better at isolating dark regions of an image than cheaper projectors. We’re very happy with the black levels on our Sony ES-40 and haven’t noticed any loss of detail, even in dark scenes.

Make sure it’ll look good on your size screen

When choosing a projector, figure out how big your target screen size is and work backwards from there. The bigger the screen, the more light your projector will need to put out. The ES-40 stood out in its price bracket for putting out a lot of light- enough to fill our 120″ screen.

There are other tradeoffs to consider, too: if you zoom in on the projector, you’ll get a sharper image but you’ll also lose some light, so you want some light to “spare” if you’re planning on zooming at all. Had we put the projector at 13′ back from the screen, we’d be full zoomed out (so really bright) but sacrificing sharpness. With the projector moved back to 16′, we use some zoom (about 50%) to fill the screen entirely, which seemed to be the sweet spot for sharpness and brightness.

These photos were taken with an iPhone 6 in a large room lit by the projector and natural light seeping in from around our window coverings.

This photo was taken 1 foot away from the screen. The large black rectangle is my phone’s shadow. The faint grid is the ES-40’s screen door effect, which is faint compared to other projectors we considered.

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And get an actual screen (don’t use a wall)

The 1.1 gain screen made by Silver Ticket was absolutely worth the investment: we only had to project the image partially on/partially off the screen (and onto the eggshell-white wall behind the screen) during setup once to get an instant appreciation for our screen.

The black velvet border soaks up any spill-over light, so your picture looks perfectly rectangular, even if you didn’t (or couldn’t) line it up quite perfectly with the borders of the screen.

In the image below, the Silver Ticket screen is on the left and the painted wall on the right. Notice the fine bumps in the picture and blurriness on straight edges.

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Why this projector? Sony 40-ES vs. competitors

In doing all our projector research, we found that home theater (as opposed to travel-size or professional grade) projectors tend to fall into one of three categories. These are very general categories, summarized here for people who aren’t huge AV nerds. (They’re also our categories, based on commonalities between models we researched, not some industry standard.)

In this section, I’ll tell you what other projectors we considered on our path to selecting the Sony ES-40. These runners-up are all good choices for their respective tiers, so if your budget isn’t quite enough for the ES-40, take a look at these projectors instead.

Entry level home theater projectors

These projectors cost around $500, and while they put out a decent amount of light they tend to fall short on image quality at large screen sizes and black levels.

They also tend to use “color wheels” to produce their images. Color wheels “overlay” the image on themselves really quickly to produce all colors, but if you look left/right while it’s projecting you might see a rainbow flicker. Some people are more sensitive than others.

Some manufacturers have ways to reduce this effect, but at a cost – and that additional cost can buy your way into the next tier. We were looking for something more cinema-quality and we wanted to fill a 120″ screen, so we skipped this category entirely from our consideration.

(If you’re actually looking for a travel or very small projector, we use and highly recommend the Sony Portable HD projector MPCL1)

Middle tier home theater projectors

In the next bracket up you’ll find projectors using “3 chip LCD”, often abbreviated as 3LCD. These cost around around $900-$1500 and boast a better picture quality than the entry level tier.

They don’t have the color wheel problem, but many of them do seem to have a visible LCD grid. If you have a sharp eye, you’ll notice this in many office-grade projectors (something to look for in the next boring meeting you sit through at work).

Some projectors we considered in this bracket:

ViewSonic PJD7820HD 1080p

Despite its good reviews and significantly lower price, we didn’t go with this ViewSonic because it’s still a color wheel projector and we thought we might be susceptible to the rainbow effect. It also lacks the horizontal shift we needed to have our screen centered on our wall while mounting the projector to an off-center ceiling joist.

Upper tier home theater projectors

At this price range, you’ll skip the color wheels and LCD grids and spend about $2000+ for the privilege. Most projectors in this range are 3LCD but they have proprietary features to come out ahead in other ways and remain competitive. SXRD Sony proprietary technology. This tier is where we focused most of our research and comparison efforts.

Epson Home Cinema 5030UB 1080p 3D 3LCD

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The Epson Home Cinema 5030UB promises better black levels than the Sony 40-ES we ultimately went with we weren’t sold on that being the best feature. With a properly dimmed room and a high gain screen, there are ways to combat not having the very best black levels. Went with Sony because SXRD so we didn’t have the grid.

Sony VPLHW55-ES

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The Sony VPLHW55-ES is the next model up from the Sony 40-ES we ultimately chose, and it costs almost 50% more than we paid for ours. The big thing the 55-ES has that the 40-ES doesn’t is a dynamic iris. The dynamic iris gives you better black levels and the projector itself is a bit brighter with a longer lamp life. For $1000 we weren’t convinced it was worth the jump in price, so we stayed with our budget and the 40-ES.

Projector plugs and ports

The Sony 40-ES has the following ports:

  • 2 HDMI ports
  • Component (Y Pb/Cb Pr/Cr)
  • VGA (RGB/ Y Pb/Cb Pr/Cr)
  • IR in (for 3D glasses)

Note: It might be tempting to plug something like a Chromecast or an Amazon Fire TV Stick directly into one of the HDMI ports, but it requires more setup to get audio if you do. You’ll need to plug into a receiver instead to send the sound to your speakers and the picture to the projector (via the receiver). With a receiver (which typically have 5+ HDMI ports), you won’t find yourself feeling limited by “just” two HDMI ports on the projector.

Calibration tools

The ES-40 comes with plenty of tools for getting your picture level and centered and the colors just so. You can adjust hue, contrast, sharpness, but there are also presets such as “Reference” and “Film”. With these, try them and see what you like. You can also adjust colors independently.

There’s several different grids for aligning the picture and you can spend as much (or as little) time as you want matching it up to your screen. We found this process straightforward and rather satisfying once we got it lined up.

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Tradeoffs, shortcomings, and other things to know before you buy

It’s hard to find something negative to say about this projector. Most of its shortcomings (if you can call them that) are technical limitations that exist for all projectors that any would-be projector owner should be aware of.

It’s not a 4k projector

4K is the new hotness in TVs (and damn, is it ever gorgeous – I adore my 4K 55″ Vizio) but 4k projectors are still up in the pricing stratosphere. The most affordable 4k projectors start around $10k – yowch. That’s outside our budget.

At 1080p you can see a little bit of pixel stretching on a 120″ screen, but it depends how far away you are. We sit 12′ away from our screen and it’s not noticeable at all.  In general, I think any stretching is subtle and hard to notice, even on things like captions and gaming UIs. You wouldn’t see it on a smaller screen, and you probably won’t notice it unless you’re looking for it.

At 27 lbs, it’s pretty heavy – and you’re almost certainly going to ceiling mount it

Due to its size, weight, and heat output, you’re best off mounting this projector to your ceiling (rather than, say, stuffing it in a bookshelf cubby or putting it on top of some shelving). How much of a challenge that is for you depends a lot on your ceiling and DIY skills, but we found the actual mounting process quite doable with a good household-grade drill.

In our case, our ceiling joists ran perpendicular to the screen, and none of them were exactly center in relation to the screen. The joist we chose was the lesser of two evils, and it’s off center by about 4″, which we made up for using lens shift.

Our DIY skills are just above novice, but we were able to mount it to a ceiling stud ourselves. This came with some trepidation and hand-wringing, but it’s been up there for 2 months now without incident. (We left a pillow under it the first night it was up, just in case – lol).

Lamp life is a thing

If you’re a heavy TV user (I’m talking 4+ hours a day of use), I would hesitate to recommend you a projector over a television. That’s because the bulb has a finite lifespan, and replacement bulbs for the 40-ES cost around $100.

On high setting, the lamp  has a life of about 2000 hours. In some households I know that leave the TV on 8 hours a day, the lamp wouldn’t last a full year. There’s a reason so many reviews call this projector a “light canon” – you can get it BRIGHT (1700 lumens, according to Sony), but that brightness comes at a cost.

(Personally, we find the high setting to be too bright and prefer watching on the lower setting.)

On its lower setting, the lamp has an expected life of about 5000 hours. 5000 hours is more reasonable, but our hypothetical 8-hours-a-day household wouldn’t make it to 2 years on a single bulb.

The low setting looks totally fine in a darkened or partially lit room (and many viewers prefer it). Unless you’re watching in a daylit room, you’ll probably be happy with the low setting, too. Low also gives you better black levels.

There’s some math to do

You’ll need to mount your screen and your projector in such a way that they complement each other, and getting the distances right will take a little bit of measurement and arithmetic on your part.

Fortunately, there are online calculators to help. We also found drawing diagrams of the room to be a useful exercise.

More reviews

Here’s what we read when we did our research:

Mounting bracket of choice: Peerless PRGS-UNV

We went with the Peerless PRGS-UNV Precision Gear Universal Projector Mount, which is a bit pricier than competitor mounts but worth it for two reasons:

  1. Spider adapter made it easy to center the mounting hole (it comes with 4 arms but we removed one because the 40-ES only needed 3)
  2. Precision gears made it easy to tilt and position the projector, then lock it into place

Our installation was probably fairly typical: drywall ceiling, wood joists (they run perpendicular to our screen, though, so it took some mathing to figure out which one was closer to center), no extension. We used the vertical lens shift to center the image on the screen (if you don’t use vertical lens shift, you’d have to align your projector with the very center of your screen). We used this calculator to help us with our projector position.

First, we attached the spider adapter to the projector. The bracket comes with 4 “arms”, but the 40-ES only needs three. The extra was easy to remove. It took some trial and error to find the best arrangement of the arms, and this is what we settled on. The goal was to center the circular hole as close to the middle of the projector body as possible.

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There are two pieces to the mounting hardware – the one in my hand (below) gets attached to the ceiling, and the projector and its bracket slide into it. Here I am testing that the orientation is the way I want it by sliding the two halves of the bracket together.

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The dry run was a success. It’s good to get familiar with the slide-in process and the adjustment knobs on this bracket while you can still see them – once it’s on the ceiling (assuming you don’t have any kind of extension on it) you’ll probably have to do some of this by feel.

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These pencils mark where our screws will attach the bracket to the ceiling joist.

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Make sure you are on a stud, preferably near the center of the stud.

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We needed to use a longer drill bit to get both screws in place. Here’s a link to my DeWalt drill and the 3.5″ power bit I used for this project – I highly recommend them both for driving screws into studs (if you’ve never drilled into a stud before, this Q&A helped us troubleshoot when we got stuck while mounting our screen to studs).

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The ceiling-mounted bracket is now on the ceiling. The projector itself will slide into position on this bracket, a process you hopefully practiced at least a couple times on the ground.

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We spent far more time on measuring and double-checking the placement than we did on actually screwing the bracket to the ceiling and then sliding the projector onto it. This was a fairly painless installation, despite having to work with a heavy object over our heads.

Here it is in place:

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About our screen

It’s a 120″ Silver Ticket screen, and it’s amazing. Much better than projecting onto a white wall. It’s smoother, the blacks are darker, and the light areas don’t get bright hot spots like they do on a painted wall. Click here to see how the screen assembles and how to mount it on the wall.

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The bottom line

The Sony 40-ES is awesome and we love watching movies and playing games on it. With a baby on the way in a few months, we’re going to appreciate that cinema experience in our own home more than ever. 😀

Who it’s for: Home theater enthusiasts, people who want to project onto a big screen (120″), anyone susceptible to the “rainbow” effect, higher quality projector that doesn’t have a lot of the pitfalls a lot of the competitors at or below the same price have.

» Check Amazon.com for current price and inventory on Sony ES-40 «