T3 - UK (2022-01)

JANUARY 2022 T 3 25

Gadget guru

A

This is one of those

questions. You know the

ones. The questions where

Guru has to sit you down with a cup

of tea and explain that everything

those mean people told you about

switching on your headphones

close to your device, tapping three

times on the top right corner of the

screen, hopping in a circle on one

foot – it just doesn’t work.

Bluetooth is inherently laggy.

Maybe one day there’ll be a

low-range wireless technology that

will effectively replace it, but right

now it’s the one we’ve got.

But then, after Guru has brought

you a tissue and tousled your

lovely hair, he gets to deliver a

couple of bits of good news to lift

your spirits. One, codecs like aptX

Low Latency do manage to cut

things down significantly and a

huge number of headphones and

devices now support them. Second,

just about every phone or tablet

worth its salt does a bit of internal

correction to sync things up

automatically, so there should be

no perceivable delay between

picture and sound.

GADGET GURU’S MAGIC BOX

A

There’s almost no limit.
GaGu has been smushing
his fists onto an original and
very clicky Razer Huntsman (now
off sale, but you can get the better
second generation model for
around £200) for a few years now,
and while it’s lovely and all (and he
could not have been more effusive
when originally reviewing it) the
urge for something new and
extra-fancy never goes away.
If you want a keyboard which
really reflects your exquisite taste,
reader, go DIY. This way you can
get precisely the number of keys
you need, because apparently
building a mechanical keyboard
means being so cool you have to
look at a chart to find out how to
press F12. But more importantly
you can select the exact switch
combination you like, and go
shopping for fancy keycaps to
really round the whole package off.
If you don’t want to have to sell
your eyeballs to afford one, you

can pick up TKL (or tenkeyless)

bases on Amazon for around £60,

which include all the USB controller

and RGB lighting circuitry you

need. Then you’ll want a big bag

of switches (grab a keyswitch

sampler online, for about £15, if

you want to see which Cherry MX

switches suit), some lube and

o-rings for them, and the all-

important keycaps. This is the bit

that’ll really catch the eye, and the

bit you’ll be wearing down to a nub

before long. Dye sublimated caps

will not last quite as long but

they’re fine on a budget; the more

expensive doubleshot PBT is

tougher and works brilliantly with

RGB lighting.

If you really want something

special, Etsy is the place to point

your attention towards. That’s

where fancy pink epoxy keys full

of glitter live. Even if you only buy

one and slap it on your escape key,

that’s an upgrade too sparkly to

pass up.

How far should I gowith

my mechanical keyboard?

CATCLARK,GREATYARMOUTH

How do I get rid

of Bluetoothlag?

JAMESWADE,

WOLVERHAMPTON

ABOVE

Never take mind-

altering drugs

when visiting

the Egyptian

pyramids

Nobody has sent Guru anything

interesting so far this month.

Clearly his reign as a high-level

influencer has some to an end. He

has, though, been repeatedly

offered the Balldo (which offers to

transform one’s plums into a

secondary wang) and the Galactic

Cap (a mini prophylactic that you

literally glue to the tip of your old

chap) and has refused both offers

for obvious reasons.

Okay, GaGu has stopped

shuddering and his junk has now emerged

from his abdomen, so let’s talk about other

personal investments. Guru has a tiny

amount of play money sitting in

cryptocurrency, because he likes making

himself feel guilty about furthering his

ongoing destruction of the environment. He

has, because he trusts nobody, stored his

database of nonsense tokens in a physical

offline device rather than dumping them in

an online wallet. King amongst these is the

Ledger Nano X (£109), the value of which

far exceeds Guru’s current crypto balance.

It disguises itself cleverly as a USB stick

from 2 005, sits right in the drawer with

GaGu’s increasingly sticky collection of said

256MB devices, and can manage a bunch of

different currencies outside of the

blockchain. Don’t forget a backup, too:

Guru has laminated some very large QR

codes pointing to his secret stash.

Speaking of secrets, because GaGu is

nothing if not a master of the crappy segue,

his children cannot be trusted not to snoop

on the private messages sent in an almost

constant stream between Mr and Mrs Guru.

This is a problem, because the messages

are usually about the kids and subsequently

incredibly rude. JETech’s Privacy Screen

Protectors (£10) do the trick by essentially

ruining the viewing

angle of your phone.

Usability be damned

• the youth cannot
  know how many
  curse words they
  have earned.