16 T 3 JUNE 2022
HorizonTECH-O-METER
TECH-O-METER
TECHNICS SL- 1200 M 7 L
£ 899 , technics.comThe fact that Technics’ iconic SL- 1200 is now
50 years old is mindblowing. This was the
direct-drive turntable that kicked off the
hip-hop era, and depending on who you ask
it might never have been bettered. This
anniversary celebration doesn’t mess too much
with the MK7 formula, keeping the coreless
motor introduced in 2019 and DJ-friendly
features like torque and brake adjustment, a
reverse play mode, super-tight pitch and speed
control, and the kind of rigidity and damping
that’s essential both for turntable twiddlers and
kicking back with a classic album. What it does
is make things special: it comes with a gold-
coloured anodised tone arm, a host of street
culture-influenced colours, an engraved serial
number, and the satisfaction of having one of
only 1 2,000 in the world.
T 3 SAYS: Sexy decks for scratchers with class.
PETOI BITTLE
£ 300 , petoi.comLet’s get the obvious comparison out of the
way: the Bittle does indeed look a lot like
Boston Dynamics’ worryingly lifelike Spot robot
dog. It shares more than just similar looks – this
too is a codeable, quadrupedal robotics
platform. But we very much doubt it’ll be
strutting its way onto the battlefield any time
soon, given that the Bittle is more a build-it-
yourself STEM toy, weighing a scant 2 90g and
small enough to fit in the palm of your hand.
There’s an Arduino at its heart, Petoi’s own
OpenCat platform responsible for the brains,
eight degrees of freedom applied to its agile
legs, and the freedom to add your own sensors
and add-ons. You’ll be able to code it to do just
about anything, with everything from high-end
IDEs to kid-friendly tools like Scratch.T 3 SAYS: Your kids might just code tomorrow’s
robot overlords.