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- Galaxy Note 7 fires, recall and cancellation: Everything you need to know
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Garmin Vivosmart HR+ review: A fully-packed fitness tracker
There’s no shortage of fitness trackers on the market. Since the launch of the Nike FuelBand, just about everyone has had a crack at this lifestyle end of the sports device market.
Offering a lighter and simpler approach than more established sports watches, fitness bands have appeared on wrists across the world, wanting to track, remind, motivate and accompany you through your daily grind.
Many are over-ambitious, many are under-featured, but few are as accomplished as the Garmin Vivosmart HR+.
Garmin Vivosmart HR+ review: Design
Sticking to band design, the Vivosmart HR+ offers a compact form factor, measuring about 20mm wide across, with a thickness of around 13mm through the main body, before slimming into the strap.
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The hard body of the Vivosmart HR+ meets the rubbered strap, finished with a textured outer surface and a smoother inner. The sections are screwed together, so there’s no swapping bands here as you’ll find on the Fitbit Charge 2, but the strap is soft and comfortable to wear, and flexible enough to get a good fit.
The band comes in two sizes for regular or x-large wrists (Garmin’s words not ours). We found the regular size fit us well enough; for those with really small wrists, the size limiter really is the length of the device. The main body section is hard for about 55mm, so if your wrist is smaller in width, it might be less comfortable to wear.
The Vivosmart HR+ is designed to be worn snugly. Unlike a basic step/motion tracking band, as this aims to detect your heart rate, you’ll have to make sure the optical heart rate sensor on the rear doesn’t move around too much, which we found no problem with.
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There’s a 25.3 x 10.7mm display on the top that’s touch enabled and a single button beneath it, providing all the interaction with this device. Though these you’ll swipe through information and functions and use the button to start and stop your exercise tracking.
There’s a lot crammed into the Vivosmart HR+, but it’s not the prettiest device around if we’re being critical. It looks good, but the Fitbit Charge 2 offers a little more flexibility with its changeable straps and we think looks a little better too. However, this Garmin is a little smarter than its Fitbit rival.
- Best fitness trackers 2016: The best activity bands to buy today
Garmin Vivosmart HR+ review: Features and functions
The Vivosmart HR+ has a wide range of features. Starting with the most obvious, you’ll notice from the name that it includes HR – heart rate – with an optical sensor on the back. This takes your heart rate from your wrist and the Vivosmart will both detect and monitor your average heart rate through the day and more precisely measure it during activities, like running.
The “+” on the end is a little more significant, as this is the part that sets this Vivosmart apart from most other fitness bands. The + is for GPS. This GPS will monitor your location during activities, meaning you can run and get an accurate route and distance trace, where other devices rely on an estimated distance based on average step length.
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Aside from those sports features, the Vivosmart HR+ offers step tracking. This is as you’ll find on any number of fitness bands, from the Fitbit Flex to the Misfit Ray and here it’s used to monitor your activity, reminding you to move when you’ve been sitting still for too long and giving you a picture of how active you are throughout the day.
Sleep tracking rounds out the lifestyle tracking side of things. If you can sleep wearing a band like this it will keep track of how long you’re sleeping for, as well as taking your heart rate when you’re in the land of nod.
The advantage that the Vivosmart HR+ has over other devices is that it’s all self-contained: it offers all the functions of a basic fitness band and it offers the essential functions from a running watch in the same package.
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That makes it one of the smallest and lightest devices that will do all of these jobs, as this combination of functions is usually offered in a watch, like the Fitbit Surge or the TomTom Spark. The advantage that this Garmin offers is avoiding the need to have more than one device for different jobs.
The disadvantage, by the same measure, is that the size limits some of the functions it offers compared to a fully-fledged running watch. The Vivosmart doesn’t profess to track a huge range of different activity types. The main focus is running, with support for indoor and outdoor, but there’s also support for walking and a generic “cardio” and finally “other”, giving you some way to categorise your activity. There’s no support for swimming, but there is waterproofing to 5 ATM.
Garmin Vivosmart HR+ review: Performance and battery life
With so much packed into the Garmin Vivosmart HR+, it’s no surprise that it’s fairly easy to drain the battery. The battery will give you around 3 or 4 days of use, including plenty of recorded sports activity. Naturally, the less you use features like the heart rate sensor and the GPS the longer it will last so you can stretch it further.
The battery is charged via a clip-on USB charger, which is quick and easy to attach and importantly, it is secure.
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Step tracking is accurate enough, closely reflecting the sort of values we’ve achieved with a Fitbit Flex. You can change the target for the day and set it higher than the default 7500 and closer to the 10,000 steps that’s being touted as a figure to aim for by a number of health authorities.
Ad hoc movement is recorded, but using Garmin’s Move IQ system the Vivosmart will automatically detect activities it recognises. For example, if you saunter to the shops to buy some milk, that’s just steps. If you head out to walk the dog for an hour, it detects that walking and categorises it as a walk.
This isn’t recorded in the same way as manually starting a run, so if it’s detailed information you’re after, you have to select what you’re doing and hit the start button.
We tested the heart rate sensor and GPS alongside a Garmin Forerunner 610 with a chest strap and found the results to be comparable. The optical based heart rate scanner is a little slower to react to a change in heart rate, probably because it collects data less frequently, but over the course of a 45-minute run, we had the same average heart rate result from both devices.
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Heart rate is broken down in to zones to help guide you toward getting the right intensity for your desired aims, but there’s little guidance as to what these values mean. In this sense, Garmin isn’t being quite as beginner-friendly as Finnish rivals Polar, whose Flow app is a little more lifestyle-groomed than Garmin Connect. Garmin presents your data, Polar interprets it for you.
The GPS is a little slow to attract a signal on cold use (i.e., first time or in a new location), but once it knows where it is, subsequent connections are much faster, under a minute on average. You’ll need a clear view of the sky, so on first use it’s worth putting the Vivosmart HR+ outside to get that connection. There’s no option to take the GPS signal from your phone – something that the TomTom Spark 3 offers – and that sort of option would be a great addition to the Vivosmart.
We found the GPS route and distance to be pretty accurate, although it does cut some corners (literally), suggesting it doesn’t log the data points as regularly as some larger devices. This is probably to prevent excessive battery drain, but for this type of device the results are accurate enough and better than the guesstimate of other devices.
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Naturally, all the information is presented on that small top display, with the ability to swipe through the stats about your activity. On the run you’ll get time, distance, pace, calories burnt, heart rate and the zone you’re in. The display is illuminated so you can view in light or dark conditions, but one of the drawbacks compared to a larger watch is that you’re limited in how much data you can view in one glance at your wrist. That means you have to swipe repeatedly, as only two pieces of information can be displayed at any time.
Garmin VivosmartHR+ review: Garmin Connect app
Modern devices aren’t designed to be used in isolation and that brings us back to the app we’ve just mentioned, Garmin Connect. Garmin has been making fitness and sports devices for a long time – especially compared to relative newcomers like Fitbit.
The Garmin Connect system and app has been around for some time too, presenting your information in app form and through its website. It has evolved from a fairly data-heavy place to somewhere that’s becoming increasingly lifestyle oriented, as more devices are launched to appeal to those who want to track things 24/7, rather than just running or cycling.
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With the Vivosmart bridging the gap between lifestyle and running with its unique feature set, the app needs to support both these sides. It offers a range of “snapshots” that give you glanceable information: a summary of your step progress, the key stats from your last run, your weight and so on. These can be customised to only show the information you want to see.
Thereafter you can dive deeper into things like your runs, where you can view the route, your averages, all your stats broken down, your lap times and graphs for heart rate and pace. Once you reach these areas of Garmin Connect, it starts to feel more like the app it used to be, for those more interested in sports performance.
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It even does step cadence, something of an advanced feature for a device of this type, which may be a case of it giving you data because it can, not because it’s particularly useful to the user.
This is a universal app for all your Garmin devices so if you have a bike computer or have used another Garmin watch for example, you’ll find the data all in one place.
Garmin will let you link up this data, so if you’d rather see it elsewhere you can, for example hooking up with Strava or MyFitnessPal if you want monitor your calorie intake more closely.
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Best of all, the Garmin Vivosmart doesn’t need connecting to your PC. Although you can connect it to Garmin Express to update firmware and sync data, for most people it will be the connection to the phone that’s important. We found this to be a solid connection and Garmin Connect is a stable app on Android where we tested it.
Garmin Vivosmart HR+ review: Smart functions
Aside from the sports and fitness functions, the Vivosmart HR+ joins the party in offering you notifications from your phone. This is something that Garmin has looked at across its range of devices. That means you’ll get incoming calls, messages and other app notifications on your wrist with a vibration.
The size of the display means that some of these are a little squished and you don’t get the experience here that you’ll find on a better-sized watch like the Polar M600 with its full Android Wear treatment, but at least you’re getting something to alert you. If you’re walking the dog you can glance and see that you don’t need to read that Facebook message – and that’s what notifications are good for. This is an advantage over some devices that only offer basic calls and messages, rather than third-party notifications too.
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You’ll also get music controls, meaning you can play and pause or skip tracks on your phone. That might save you getting your phone out of your pocket, so it’s a feature worth having, although there’s no support for making this a standalone music device: you can’t transfer songs onto it to listen to while out running.
There is also control for Garmin’s Virb cameras, meaning you can remotely start and stop recording from your wrist. All in all, it’s a comprehensive package, but it’s the combination of 24/7 activity tracking and the more advanced support for running and other activities that gives the Vivosmart HR+ its appeal.
Verdict
The Garmin Vivosmart HR+ is something of a surprise package, stuffing a lot of functionality into a device that’s only a little larger than some other fitness tracker bands.
It’s a little more expensive than most at £169.99, but it’s the feature set that appeals, as you might save yourself the need to have two devices to record all that information.
The Garmin Vivosmart HR+ is an ideal device for someone who wants to track daily activity as well as record runs or walks in more detail, but doesn’t want to go the whole hog and start wearing a running watch all the time.
HP refreshes Spectre x360, Envy 13, Envy AIO, and Envy Display with design updates and more
HP has updated its premium Spectre and Envy consumer laptops, as well as the Envy all-in-one and Envy Display.
The company announced that Spectre x360 and Envy 13 have been given larger batteries and refreshed designs, with the x360 receiving a smaller footprint and an edge-to-edge display. HP also gave its Envy all-in-one PC a design update and Intel’s newest processors.
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HP Spectre x360 still offers a display that can rotate, but that display now comes with an edge-to-edge panel. The new model is 11.8mm slimmer than before, offers a quad speaker array, can last for up to 15 hours between charges, and has the ability to recharge its battery up to 90 per cent in 90 minutes. You can get it with a seventh-generation Core i5 or Core i7 processor, up to 16GB of RAM, and up to a 1TB SSD.
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The new Envy 13 is made of aluminium and magnesium and can be configured with a full HD or quad HD display (there’s a touchscreen option, too). HP gave it a 28-per cent larger battery for 14 hours of life. It’s not as small as the x360, nor is it as pricey, but it can charge up to 90 per cent in 90 minutes. You can also get it with a seventh-generation Core i5 or i7 processor, up to 16GB of RAM, and 1TB of storage.
HP
As for HP’s new Envy all-in-one, it has a 27-inch quad-HD IPS touchscreen, with a 4K option is coming soon. You’ll find a 9.5mm bezel, a pedestal design, Intel’s latest Core i5 or i7 processors, and an optional Nvidia GTX950M graphics card. HP is also updating its Envy Display. It’s now a 27-inch 4K monitor with an IPS panel (178-degree viewing angles and 99 percent sRGB color gamut). It comes with plenty of ports, too.
HP
The new HP Spectre x360 will be available sometime in October starting at $1,159, while the new Envy 13 will cost $849 and the Envy all-in-one will start at $1,249 when they launch this month. HP also said the Envy Display will launch in December for $499.
There’s no word yet on UK pricing and availability.
Colorado researchers turn beer waste into battery electrodes
In the beer-friendly state of Colorado, researchers at the University of Colorado-Boulder have turned brewery runoff into something with a different sort of buzz: low-cost lithium-ion battery electrodes. According to the authors of a new research paper published in the journal Applied Materials and Interfaces a single barrel of beer takes about seven barrels of water to make, and the wastewater must be filtered before it can be disposed of (which can also affect the price of your beer). But it turns out that same byproduct makes an excellent and freely available raw material for battery production.
While it is possible to make carbon-based battery electrodes from biomass, the process is often costly and limited by availability of raw materials. In this case, the Boulder team’s process is a little like beermaking itself, in that it requires the help of some beneficial fungus called Neurospora crassa that grows in the sugar-rich wastewater. Not only does the fungus clean the runoff, but it also creates “one of the most efficient naturally-derived lithium-ion battery electrodes known to date,” according to Science Daily.
“The wastewater is ideal for our fungus to flourish in,” graduate student and lead author Tyler Higgins said, “so we are happy to take it.” While it’s not the first beer-derived fuel cell we’ve seen, Huggins and his co-authors see a future in the beer-to-batteries business — they’ve already filed a patent for the process and created a new company called Emergy to commercialize it. “We see large potential for scaling,” Huggins said, “because there’s nothing required in this process that isn’t already available.”
Via: Utility Dive
Source: Applied Materials and Interfaces, Science Daily
Google and Facebook team up on a direct connection to Asia
Google and Facebook are looking to speed up their connection to Hong Kong. According to an announcement today, the two internet giants have teamed up with the Pacific Light Data Communications Company and TE SubCom to build the first direct undersea connection between Los Angeles and Hong Kong. When it is completed in 2018, the 8,000-mile (12,800 km) Pacific Light Cable Network will shuttle 120 terabits of data per second between the two cities and greatly expand each company’s reach in Asia.
As Google’s Director of Networking Infrastructure Brian Quigley explained in a blog post, the data capacity will beat out the previous trans-Pacific record holder (currently held by another Google-backed fiber cable) and gives the PLCN enough capacity for 80 million people in Hong Kong to have an HD video call with Los Angeles at the same time. It also gives Google Cloud Platform — which powers services like Spotify and part of iCloud — the largest network backbone of any public cloud provider. On a user-facing level, the new cable will speed up responsiveness in Google’s G Suite apps for users in the Asia-Pacific region, but the wider implication is that a faster connection will give both companies a stronger foothold on the continent and open doors into more developing countries.
Via: VentureBeat
Source: TE SubCom, Google Blog
Comcast set-top boxes now offer detailed stats for more sports
Did you like the abundance of stats while watching the Rio Olympics on Comcast? If so, you’re in for a treat from now on. Comcast is rolling out those same on-screen stats for every sport its X1 set-top box app covers. If you want to see where a basketball team has taken most of its shots, or want to know how well your favorite hockey player is doing, the info is just a short hop away. Finding that data should be easier, too.
As part of the upgrade, Comcast is expanding its voice commands to include sports. You can ask for stats on your favorite team, or compare two star players to see which one is faring best this season. Just don’t expect to bark orders right away. Voice support is coming to football in the “coming weeks,” and it’ll reach both basketball and hockey sometime later this year.
Source: Comcast
Jackbox releases its latest party game pack on October 18th
You may not be all that familiar with Jackbox Games, but it has quite the following: party games like Quiplash have helped it stand out in a sea of indie studios. And it’s about to make it a little bit easier to get acquainted. The developer has revealed that it’s releasing its Jackbox Party Pack 3 bundle on October 18th for PCs (through Steam), the PS4 and Amazon Fire TV users. Xbox One owners will get the title slightly later, on October 21st. Whichever route you go, you’ll get the same experience.
The cornerstone is undoubtedly Quiplash 2, the sequel to Jackbox’s give-a-goofy-answer game. However, the other games might be worth a look. Guesspionage is a polling game based on public answers, for instance, while Trivia Murder Party is probably the only trivia game hosted by a serial killer. Fakin’ It asks you to expose a lying friend, and Tee K.O. has you squaring off using clever shirts and slogans. Like most party games, you’re probably only going to play these titles every once in a while — however, the sheer variety (and hopefully quality) of them might be enough to justify a purchase.
Source: Jackbox Games, PlayStation Blog
VR at comic cons isn’t worth the hassle
There was plenty to see at this year’s New York Comic Con, from the stars of the newest Netflix shows, to elaborate cosplay of superheroes and giant robots. However, it seemed like quite a few exhibitors would prefer that attendees spend their time in booths with virtual reality headsets strapped to their face. But instead of feeling like a pop-up arcade where fans could delve into the worlds of their favorite programs, many of the simulations felt like cheap marketing presentations. And, honestly, the technology and fans deserve so much better.
The use of virtual reality to promote other media is nothing new. We’ve seen simulations that allowed you to visit Castle Black from HBO’s Game of Thrones, or one that put you into the role of a Ghostbuster. Indeed, the Westworld setup at New York Comic Con would appear to be more of the same, with some extra flourishes to more fully immerse attendees in the world of the show. Those who showed up at its off-site location were greeted by women and men dressed in white and asked to wait in a tasteful lounge area. It felt luxurious, like I had actually booked a trip with the fictional company. Unfortunately, that feeling wouldn’t last very long as I was led into a mostly empty room and an HTC Vive was strapped to my face.
I continued my experience as a Westworld customer, waving the controllers to choose a hat and gun, then testing out my shooting skills on a small range. I felt mildly annoyed by the inability to walk around and explore the buildings in the distance, and that feeling got worse as the narrative kicked in. The scenery “glitched” and I ended up in a lab where technicians frantically scrambled to figure out what was going wrong with the sim. I was told to sit down — in an actual physical chair — and then I was rolled around the laboratory floor, passively watching as executives argued and malfunctioning androids attacked their makers. It was essentially an infodump that the company hoped would interest me in the series.
Amazon did something similar for The Man in the High Castle, minus the exterior role-playing elements. I was show protagonist Juliana Crain, searching for a filmstrip hidden in an office. I was a bit too tall for the room and looking down revealed some comically large breasts, while the gameplay mostly consisted of clicking on various items, with text hints appearing if I took a tad too long making my way through the office.
A lot of VR experiences encourage exploration and discovery, but neither of these programs had the luxury of letting the user wander due to the need to push their particular TV shows in under five minutes. They didn’t even do a very good job conveying what their source material was about. A friend of mine who also tried the Man in the High Castle experience said that it was a good thing he had seen the pilot, because he otherwise had no idea what was going on. The same is true of Westworld: I know that it’s ostensibly a story about theme park androids run amok, but that’s only because I’m familiar with the source novel and original film. The confusion and frustration I experienced during the VR demo actually made me a bit wary of the show: I still haven’t seen a single episode.
These experiences are “convention exclusive,” meaning they’ll never see release outside of the handful of attendees who arrive at the booth early enough or are willing to wait a few hours in line for a turn. They don’t even have a good ripple effect: You can’t really share the experience on social media, and your friends won’t watch a TV show or movie just because you saw a cool VR demo. So most of these demos tend to be short and unsatisfying, because there’s no point in spending a lot of resources on something that can only reach a couple thousand people at most.
This results in a sort of knock-on effect, as the experiences stop being worth the time and money attendees put into them. A single-day badge is $50, and many of the booths had lines advertising two or three hour waits. With hundreds of guests, dozens of panels and cosplay to check out, I’d be pretty pissed if I wasted a good chunk of my day on a mediocre VR demo.
At first glance, Starbreeze Studios’ John Wick experience would seem to be more of the same: It’s also a tie-in for an upcoming film and a limited number of stations meant a long wait. You even start out by watching a short trailer. But it quickly breaks off into a fully-realized simulation, forcing you to defend yourself from waves and waves of attackers on a roof. I was far from a passive observer of an ad at this point: I had to actually turn to aim my guns and duck behind walls to avoid being shot.
It didn’t matter whether or not I was familiar with John Wick, because it cut to the meat of what people like about the series: The intense action sequences. Granted, it’s a lot easier to convey the story of an assassin who everyone wants to kill than say, an alternate history where the Nazis won World War II. But, the best games and VR experiences play to their source materials’ strengths, and John Wick did that beautifully.
The reason that it succeeded is because it’s not an ephemeral gimmick. It’s actually going to be a real game next year, called “The John Wick Chronicles,” available on SteamVR for $20 in February. So no one actually needed to stand in line for hours to try it, they could have just waited for the retail release. But, if they’d never tried VR before, it was certainly a good first experience to have. It sold virtual reality as much as it sold John Wick.
This is important because even with three major headsets available, the price and required hardware keep them out of the hands of many fans. Large public events like New York Comic Con end up being the first time many people get to try the Oculus Rift, HTC Vive and PlayStation VR, so those experiences need to be good. Who’s going to want to buy a headset if their first simulation is a bad commercial?
Oculus’ plan to rule VR is to throw more money at it
Oculus is the first company to help ship more than one virtual reality headset. In the past year alone, it’s collaborated on two smartphone-powered versions of the Samsung Gear VR as well as the Rift, a higher-end model that requires a PC. But the company is also facing a growing field of rivals, including the HTC Vive, Sony PlayStation VR and, most recently, Google Daydream, which aims to unseat Samsung in the smartphone category. So how does Oculus draw consumers to its side? By betting on exclusives, eschewing standards, funding a vast ecosystem of games and relying on Facebook’s pocketbook.
Oculus touched on these efforts last week at its third annual developer’s conference, which also happened to be its largest. The event drew over 3,000 attendees — a far cry from the 1,000 or so who attended the inaugural Oculus Connect back in 2014. And it’s no wonder. With various consumer VR headsets finally shipping this year, virtual reality is no longer just a fad. But that doesn’t mean consumers are buying in just yet. Right now, VR is still something of a niche market. Samsung and Oculus reported there are now over a million Gear VR users, which sounds like a lot, but that’s still just a sliver of the population. The company wouldn’t announce exact Rift sales numbers, but that’s projected to be much lower.
Plus, Oculus suffered a few roadblocks along the way. Earlier this year, it weathered criticism when it implemented a DRM that blocked Rift titles from working with the HTC Vive. It eventually removed that restriction following popular outcry. Despite pushback by the community though, Oculus hasn’t given up on exclusives. “There are hacky ways of getting around the exclusivity,” said Jason Rubin, head of content for Oculus, referring to tools like Revive that some have used to circumvent the Rift’s DRM. But as Rift-exclusive titles are optimized for Oculus hardware, Rubin says it’s still best if users don’t use competitor headsets. To not offer exclusives isn’t an option either. “Everyone else is doing exclusives,” Rubin told Engadget, adding that to not do the same would put them at a disadvantage.
Exclusives or not, though, it seems to me that Oculus has the upper hand against the competition. For one thing, it has Facebook’s bank account at its disposal. At Connect last week, the company announced that it’s investing $250 million in game development, and will likely invest $250 million more. This makes Oculus a fearsome competitor because it’s able to foster a larger roster of games and apps, as well as take chances on more experimental stuff.
For example, it unveiled “asynchronous space warp” last week, a technology that would lower the minimum requirements of Rift hardware. It revealed that it has a standalone VR headset in the works, which none of its rivals have announced they’re doing. It’s also able to go head-to-head with its competition. While HTC’s Vive was touted as the more immersive VR system with its hand-motion wands and room-scale experience, Oculus is punching back with the release of its Touch controllers and the option of a third sensor for that same room-scale feel.
Plus, let’s not forget Oculus’ efforts in the social VR space, which instantly posits the Rift and the Gear VR as more than just headsets for gaming or 360-degree videos. It could also be used to talk with friends and family, which is a much more compelling use-case to the everyday consumer.
Still, that doesn’t mean the company is on an instant road to success. Sony’s PSVR is a lot cheaper and works on the PS4, a console that many people already own. It also remains to be seen what Google has in store for Daydream and how many more Daydream-compatible headsets will come to market in the next few months. Seeing as Samsung is facing a dire reputation crisis with the discontinuation of the Galaxy Note 7, the Gear VR isn’t looking so good right now.
“This is a very, very, new industry,” said Rubin. “It’s both fun and frustrating. Any given day you can wake up and see an announcement in the newspaper and say ‘Well that came out of nowhere and now we’re headed in another direction.’”
“But it’s a fun ride,” he said.
Grab your sonic and go for an adventure with these Doctor Who wallpapers!
It’s one of the touchstones of fandom, a franchise that renews and reinvents itself for its audience just as its main character regenerates every few years. Whether you’re a fan of fezzes and bow ties or attack eyebrows, or if you’re still pining after Ten, Doctor Who has something for everyone, and that includes wallpapers.
This wallpaper is so warm, so inviting, so comforting… and yet so sad. It’s a reminder that the Doctor walks in eternity, and as was said in the last season: “Immortality isn’t living forever. That’s not what it feels like. Immortality is everybody else dying.” The Doctor has seen and cared for and even loved so many, yet he always ends up alone — just a mad man with a box, running away from that pain and that loneliness. That means this isn’t exactly a happy wallpaper, but it’s been a small reminder to me to cherish the people I surround myself with.
The Lonely Doctor by T3ch82
I’m gonna make a confession here: Matt Smith was the first Doctor I could get into. (ducks and hides) I couldn’t help it, Ten was just so… moody, so dramatic, so heavy. Matt Smith’s Doctor was younger in appearance but felt more matured, more vibrant, more full of life.
He also had a penchant for thinking out-of-style accessories were cool. Fezzes are cool, bowties are cool, suspenders are cool. Sure, they are, Doctor…. Sure they are.
Doctor Who: The Eleventh Doctor by alicexz
Twelve has been a dramatic shift from the previous two Doctors, and while it takes a while to warm up to him, he’s a Doctor worth knowing beneath the gruff exterior and the attack eyebrows. (My god, the attack eyebrows!) And while there are several amazing details in this wallpaper, the one that calls out to me and my jacket-loving mind is that luscious red lining to his coat. I just wanna steal it and run away with it… hopefully with his shiny new sonic in the pocket.
The 12th Doctor. by spidermonkey23
The most constant character in Doctor Who is not the Daleks, not even The Doctor himself: it’s his TARDIS. The TARDIS may undergo some slight redecorating between Doctors, but it’s still that fabulous blue Police Box, bigger on the inside and capable of traversing (almost all of) time and space. This lusciously dark wallpaper highlights the TARDIS’s iconic outline against a magnificent nebula deep in the darkest corners of the universe, and reminds us that no matter how dark the universe may seem, the TARDIS and The Doctor it carries within will light it up with hope and insane plans.
TARDIS Wallpaper – Black Edition. by MrGrandhighmonkey
These wallpapers are a little smaller than I usually want, but for a text wallpaper, they scale well. Doctor Who has amazing action and truly awesome visuals, but it also has a lot of quotable dialog. Twelve and Clara in particular had had quite a lot of gems, like this wallpaper, which is as true as anything the Doctor has ever said. Those attack eyebrows get away with the most ridiculous of schemes. As a bonus, if you want a Doctor Who wallpaper that will keep you motivated heading into election day, this one is perfect.
Eyebrows by inkandstardust
AIVAnet 