Author: Jeremy Horwitz

Western Digital’s My Passport portable hard drives have all been appealingly small and ready to take pretty much anywhere — except that they’ve depended on a computer for connectivity and power. Made entirely from plastic, My Passport Wireless ($180-$220) preserves the same compact design but is capable of fully wireless operation. A six-hour rechargeable battery and 802.11n MIMO Wi-Fi enable the 1TB or 2TB hard disk to stream media content to up…

Last year, we covered Cambridge Audio’s Minx series of speakers, which like other Apple AirPlay-standard wireless audio systems were saddled with unjustifiably high price tags and unimpressive wireless performance. Despite sharing its predecessors’ industrial design, Go V2 is a very different beast. Armed with Bluetooth rather than AirPlay and five total speakers — twin 0.75” tweeters, two 2” woofers, and one 5.4”-wide…

Most of Soundfreaq’s speakers require no explanation: it’s clear from their designs that they are made to be stationary, portable, ultra-portable, clock radios, or highly budget-sensitive. Double Spot doesn’t fit neatly into any of those categories. It’s based upon the company’s stripped-down $70 Sound Spot, yet it’s more than twice as large, and roughly twice as expensive.   When asked to explain Double Spot’s…

Originally shown at CES back in January, iBN6 has three major and interrelated things going for it: an edgy new body and a IPX7 waterproof certification at a very affordable price. iHome is arguably the king of $100 speakers — it has had more very good and great options at this price point than any other Apple accessory maker — and iBN6 has been designed to deliver a compelling waterproof experience despite selling for $50 less than Grace Digital’s…

Japanese film and minimalist case maker Power Support has been a favorite of iLounge’s editors for years, even though it has radically cut back its product lineup since the iPad was released. The company’s completely clear Air Jacket shells for MacBook Air caught our attention years ago; now it’s offering Air Jacket Clear Black for MacBook Pro ($75-$80), which lets you tint the exterior of your Retina display-equipped MacBook Pro….

Aesthetically, TravelCard is a small rectangular box with a three-toned design and a slide-out Lightning plug as its most noteworthy design features. The tapered aluminum front alternates between glossy and dot-matte finishes that make the black, silver, red, or blue metal look fancier, while the all-plastic back is either white or black depending on the base color you select. Our green review unit isn’t currently offered as a color, but appears…

Roughly six months after we covered the original Airframe car vent mount, Kenu has released Airframe+ ($30), a tweaked version capable of supporting larger devices. Now capable of expanding to fit devices with up to 6″ screen sizes (including both of the rumored iPhone Air/6 models), Airframe + ditches the gray accents of the original model in favor of black, and offsets the car vent mounting point to be closer to the center of a larger device.…

A report from Japanese Apple blog Macotakara suggests that Apple is planning to offer “high-resolution audio” hardware and iOS software options, though the specifics of the functionality remain somewhat unclear. According to the report, iOS 7 and the current Lightning connector limit audio playback of high-definition audio files, so Apple will update the Lightning connector’s unseen chipset and iOS to support the higher-bitrate audio,…

Comparing $19 Apple iPad 10W USB Power Adapters and clones sold on eBay and elsewhere for $3, Ken Shirriff elucidates the risks unknowingly assumed by buyers of knockoff accessories. Cosmetically all but identical from the outside, the iPad chargers actually differ dramatically inside, with the Apple version providing a more stable flow of 2-Amp power with overheating and electrocution protection. By contrast, the clone produces only around 1-Amp…

Flying under the radar due to a messy legal battle, the consumer electronics arm of Philips—temporarily renamed “Woox Innovations”—was quietly sold late last month to Gibson Brands, the musical instrument and audio equipment company. Gibson will apparently license the Philips name for an initial term of seven years, and sell previously-announced Philips products that were temporarily placed under the Woox Innovations name,…

The basic concept with Airbender Pro is simple. Your iPad Air gets wrapped up in a hard plastic and TPU playthrough case — one with integrated screen, button, and port protection — and if you want to carry it around, you attach an Air-sized Bluetooth keyboard and metal stand to the back of the case with a camera lens cap-style plastic clamp. While the combined parts fold down into a substantial 1.25”-thick shape that’s around twice…

EverDock and EverDock Duo are substantially similar riffs on the same theme: 2.55” wide and 1.5” tall, the rounded rectangular blocks use hard plastic inserts and narrow, serpentine channels to hold self-supplied Lightning cables — one black micro-USB cable is included for each dock, so the 2.55”-deep EverDock has one, and the 3.45”-deep EverDock Duo comes with two. The idea is that you buy either EverDock just once, swapping…

“Micro leather” on the outside and “suede” on the inside, Roadster Writer ($100) is Logiix’s new keyboard folio case for the iPad Air. Like a number of other cases we’ve seen recently, Roadster Writer has a plastic shell on its inner right side, capable of protecting the iPad Air and rotating for portrait orientation typing if you prefer that over landscape typing. While the shell isn’t detachable from the folio, the large chiclet-style Bluetooth…

Measuring 1” on each side, the plastic Dice+ cube arrives bundled with a fabric micro USB charging cable and a drawstring carrying bag. When powered off, the cube’s six sides are blank white and completely nondescript, except for a tiny arrow-shaped set of dots on one side. Push just a little too strenuously in the arrow’s direction and you’ll reveal the micro-USB port hidden underneath the surface — the only metal element…

Developed in Japan, iQ5 has the coolest industrial design we’ve yet seen in an Apple microphone accessory: a 1.1” silver metal ball juts out 2.25” from the bottom surface of your Lightning connector-equipped iPad, iPhone, or iPod, attached via a rotating arm to a 2.25”-wide glossy white plastic platform. From the right angle, the ball looks like a robot head wearing a pair of white headphones, with a black stripe dividing its…

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