Beyerdynamic Xelento Remote high-end earphones review

Chances are that if you’ve done some headphone research, you’ve heard of Beyerdynamic. The long-standing German audio manufacturer isn’t necessarily mainstream but well recognized in the audiophile community, with numerous classics to its name. The company’s latest on-goings in the pursuit of perfected audio is its home-brewed Tesla driver. It debuted in the Tesla T1 over-ear flagship and proved to be a force to be reckoned with. Hence, Beyerdynamic wasn’t going to stop there.

The motto for the Xelento are “An audible piece of jewelry”, and rightly so.

Finding that it was lacking in an in-ear flagship, the company went to work. But to have an earphone with performance that could stand up with its larger brethren, it had to have as capable as technology. Yes, Beyerdynamic made the excellent decision to attempt to miniaturize its prized Tesla driver, and it succeeded – meet the Xelento Remote.

Design

Generally, Beyerdynamic headphones have a distinct aesthetic but aren’t really flashy or exotic in design. The company lets the material, construction, and attention to detail do the talking, rather than something that will turn heads. Interestingly enough, the Xelento push on that philosophy, as the earpieces are enveloped in a shiny facade.

The motto for the Xelento are “An audible piece of jewelry”, and rightly so. The metallic sheen matches that of polished silver jewelry. Many times with these expensive earphones, buyers don’t really get their money’s worth in design, so we welcome Beyerdynamic’s slick presentation in that respect.

But it won’t be everyone’s style. Still, we’d argue it shouldn’t detract. The brushed metal cap on the outward surface of the earpieces provides a substantial contrast (which is also largely what you see when the earpieces are in your ears) and the cue needed to depict a “Beyerdynamic” headphone.

However, you get a different story in-hand. The silver chassis feels more like plastic than metal. But not low quality by any means. It may be a point of contention when you’re investing close to $1K on audiophile-class earphones, but bear in mind that the driver shell does affect audio output, and Beyerdynamic may have strategically chosen this material because it’s better for the ultimate result.

Some high-end headphones sometimes put everything into the audio development and earpieces, but not enough focus on the cable. This isn’t the case here. The Xelento have the best cable we’ve used in any earphone. It’s robust, thin, and as pretty as the earpieces themselves. The translucent shrinkwrap shows silver twisted wires, and the Y-splitter, chin slider, and 3.5mm jack are all brushed metal (real) bits.

The “Remote” in the Xelento’s name implies that it’s smartphone-friendly, unlike many of its class. In the stock cable, you’ll get a three-button control unit with microphone for quick functions on the connected device. There are volume up and volume down, and the middle button primarily pauses/plays but can also move forward and back in tracks.

The remote unit is in-line on the right channel cable. However, it’s really lightweight and feels like it’s not there.

Weirdly, while double pressing moves to the next track, you hold down the button to move back (at least, on my Android phone). And I don’t see a way to toggle Google Assistant. Typically, holding down the middle button would toggle the virtual assistant and three presses would go to the previous track. If you don’t care about the remote, Beyerdynamic generously includes an extra cable in the box that excludes it.

Usability

The wear of the Xelento follows the around-the-ear convention like many of its class. Donning isn’t as convenient as just simply sticking the thing in your ear (rather, you have to orient the earpiece, stick it in, and adjust the cable up and around your ear), but the benefit becomes clear after some use. It’s a much more secure fit and eliminates microphonics noise.

The Xelento’s silicone tips are rather unique. They’re shallow and have this bell shape to them. It makes sense with respect to the design. The shallow nozzles don’t go deep in the ear canals, so widening the eartips helps make sure that you get an appropriate seal.

Unfortunately, this isn’t the best approach with regard to isolation (which benefits from going in as deep as possible). The Xelento’s sound isolation isn’t bad, per-se, but it’s average-ish. Thankfully, Beyerdynamic includes foam tips in the box for those times you’d struggle with noise.

Despite being thin, the rubbery makeup of the cable notably resists tangles. We can see that Beyerdynamic didn’t overlook any details. The only drawback (but minor) is that the rubbery material has a springy nature. So depending on your posture, the cable may not want to fit perfectly around your ear. The chin slider is there to assist in keeping things tightly in place, but even still, the cable will have some movement when you turn your head (but shouldn’t pop out off your ear).

Like many earphones of this class, Beyerdynamic also made the Xelento detachable from the cable (using the common MMCX connector standard). This is always appreciable, especially under the consideration of protecting your investment. Cables can fail, and replacing the cable is much better than having to buy the whole thing again. You also get the freedom to switch to a third-party cable if desired, like if you wanted the capability for Balanced output.

Beyerdynamic’s attention to detail also included the packaging. We liked how the unboxing presentation first started with a simple showcase of the most important part of your purchase – the earpieces. Then digging in shows a barrage of eartips and other high-quality accessories.

The generous packaging includes a wide variety of eartips (silicone and foam), extra cable, and premium leather carrying case.

The carrying case is well done (albeit a little large). It magnetically closes and has separating compartments.

Sound

I dived into the sound review of the Xelento having little idea of what to expect. I haven’t gotten a chance to hear Beyerdynamic’s preceding Tesla T1 headphones for reference, but have briefly auditioned the company’s initial attempt at this earphone, the T8iE, which was a collaborative effort with Astell & Kern. I loved the airy, energetic, and full-bodied sound of that earphone. I have also heard a couple of other well-received in-ears at this price range.

Technically being a variant of the Astell & Kern partnership, and boasting the same Tesla driver technology, it’s natural that I can hear some of the same qualities in the Xelento. But I think it’s for the better that Beyerdynamic has full reigns of the tuning with the Xelento. The T8iE leaned on a warm sound signature (accentuating the bass response) where the Xelento is noticeably more balanced. Well, balanced except for the heightened sub-bass.

You’ll get the most out of the Xelento when paired with a high-res DAC, but they’ll still get you excellent sound from a smartphone.

The sub-bass is no doubt the signature element of the Xelento, and the first thing you’ll most likely appreciate. Now, I’m not talking about some bloated, head-shaking bass tuned to satisfy bassheads. It is weighty and hits hard, but as much as it is impactful it is controlled and superiorly defined. When the low-end bass parts of a track hit, I’m sure not just audiophiles will be able to really appreciate how much body is there. It demands your attention, making it easily to recognize the magnitude of depth and dimensionality it’s able to convey. Not exaggerating; it’s that good.

This kind of implies that Beyerdynamic didn’t aim to make the Xelento exactly a “reference” earphone, but we feels it lands a fantastic balance between energy and accuracy. Everything above the sub-bass range sounds mostly on the same level, with mild waviness. At first, we felt like the mid-bass range was a bit light, and while it is compared to a midrange-forward earphone like the Shure SE846, we wouldn’t really deem the Xelento a V-shaped signature. We think it’s a perception issue. The mid-bass doesn’t have quite the vigor that the sub-bass has, and since they’re back-to-back, the pair can come off as mildly disjointed. But in actuality, the mid-bass has just as good definition and an authoritative presence. We’d suggest Beyerdynamic to smooth out the transition next time.

We hear a little more strength (mildly) as we move to the mid-range. Unlike the Sennheiser IE 800 (a direct German-made single dynamic driver competitor), the mids don’t dip and lose impact. In fact, we really appreciated how airy and spacious vocals sound. This is another area where the Xelento punch above their in-ear weight, as it’s where you really appreciate the dimensional dynamics of the different sounds.

Separation and clarity are certainly where they should be at, at this price-point. Same goes for soundstage, which isn’t super wide but a decently spacious oval shape around the head. The treble follows a similar quality and presence of the mids. It’s extension (that high frequency sparkle) is noteworthy, but it’s not a peaky or fatiguing reproduction. The treble is smooth nature to it, in which it trades a little listenability for that sharp clarity you’d find in few earphones, like the Sennheiser IE 800. Overall, the Xelento make it easy to analyze and appreciate the details you may have been missing in your favorite music.

Final Thoughts

It’s a critical decision when you’re spending this much on a pair of headphones. There are actually more in-ears at this price-point than you’d think, and plenty that well surpass it. But we’d say that you’re at a good place with Xelento in the grand scheme of things. Every aspect of it is solid, from the unique, eye-pleasing design and spot-on construction to the comprehensively proficient acoustics. The Xelento is more evidence that Beyerdynamic’s Tesla driver is a pivotal achievement.

Dual-arm pickle-picking robot will assist farmers with cucumber harvests

Fraunhofer IPK

Whether it’s strawberries, tomatoes, or seemingly any other type of naturally grown edible produce, specially designed “picker” robots can be devised to to pluck them from trees, bushes, the ground, or wherever else they might growing. A new project created by Germany’s Fraunhofer Institute for Production Systems and Design Technology IPK adds yet another variety of produce to the list: cucumbers.

Engineers at the Fraunhofer Institute are developing a dual-arm robot intended for the automated harvesting of cucumbers — and it could help save the backs of the human cucumber pickers who currently have to manually pick them. It’s part of an E.U. project titled CATCH, standing for (in English) “Cucumber Gathering – Green Field Experiments.”

“Automatized robotized cucumber harvesting belongs to one of more challenging tasks,” Dr. Dragoljub Surdilovic, one of the researchers on the project, told Digital Trends. “The main difficulty is to recognize and localize the green fruits in green environment, [and] to separate them without damaging or injuring the cucumber and plant. Other disturbances such as obstacles [or] moisture in a dynamic unstructured environment make the task more difficult.”

The team’s solution involves using a combination of 2D and 3D cameras, along with multispectral vision, to detect the cucumbers. This can be done with a success rate of up to 94 percent. The robotic arms support the vision systems by assisting with search through the removal of leaves in the hunt for pickles to pick. The aim is for the robot to be as efficient as an experienced human picker, who can pick as many as 13 cucumbers per minute. However, it will have the usual advantages of an automated approach: namely possible 24/7 functionality with no sick days or holidays.

It’s not quite ready for rollout in the real world, though. “We need further research and experimental evaluations,” Surdilovic said. “At first, we should improve the detection and localization of the cucumber by adding additional sensors in grippers. The separations of cucumber is a further critical problem. [The] processing industry requires exact cutting of stems without injuring the fruit and the plant. We are developing sophisticated grippers and algorithms to detect the stems using force sensing, and devices capable of following the contours of fruit to detect and cut the stems.”

Surdilovic suggested that the technology requires roughly two more years of research and development until it is mature enough for practical deployment. “A community of farmers and cucumber producers support us, showing a big interest and needs for robotic technology,” he said. “Lack of seasonal workers and relatively higher labour costs jeopardize production of cucumbers and similar cultivars, not only in German, but also globally.”

Editors’ Recommendations

• Online supermarket Ocado’s humanoid robot is the factory worker of the future
• Panasonic built a robot gentle enough to pick tomatoes, but not exactly graceful
• Spirit animals: 9 revolutionary robots inspired by real-world creatures
• Rise of the machines: Here are the best robots we saw at CES 2018
• Forget forklifts, these tiny warehouse drones team up to lift big objects

Robo C2 review

Research Center:
Robo C2

We won’t mince words when we say Robo’s 3D printers are some of our favorites among a sea of mid-range models. What’s not to love about the company? It started as a Kickstarter project in 2012 among a group of San Diego State University students, and is now one of the largest 3D printer manufacturers in the United States.

As a follow-up to the company’s breakout R1 printer, the C2 is part of company’s ongoing effort to make 3D printing accessible to everyone through intuitive interface designs, reliable printing, quality results, and a price that the average consumer can afford. On the first three points, the C2 generally met our expectations – although the price may be a bit too much for some. Here’s what we thought of it after a couple months of intensive testing.

Features and specs

Compared to most mid-range printers, the C2 boasts a build area that’s on the larger end of the spectrum, measuring in at five inches long, five inches wide, and six inches tall. That’s certainly not a huge envelope by any means, but its spacious enough to accommodate most of the objects you’ll find on Thingiverse and other online object repositories.

Ed Oswald/Digital Trends

The only downside? The printer’s build platform isn’t heated. While this does cut down on the amount of electricity the machine uses during printing, it also makes the C2 more prone to warping and poor adhesion, which boosts the chances that you’ll end up with a failed print and have to start over again.

It’s a big improvement over the utilitarian design of the R1 – the company’s first product.

Luckily, you won’t have to fiddle with calibrating the bed though – it’s equipped with auto-leveling functionality, which makes keeping the printer in good working order a breeze.

Last but not least, you interact with the C2 via a big, bright, 3.5-inch touchscreen located on the bottom of the printer. The user interface is intuitive, and includes wizards to walk even beginners through typical maintenance processes.

All things considered, this printer offers a pretty decent range of features for its $800 price.

Setup and configuration

Good news for the less mechanical: the C2 comes all but fully assembled. All you’ll need to do is attach the print bed, attach the spool holder, affix the filament guide tube to the machine, and feed some plastic filament through. This is all somewhat standard fare when it comes to 3D printer setup – but Robo makes it especially simple with a top-notch walkthrough wizard.

Ed Oswald/Digital Trends

Even if you’re completely new to 3D printing, you should have no problem getting the C2 up and going within about 20 minutes. We left the setup to someone completely unfamiliar with the technology, and they still managed to get the machine fired up without much trouble. Setup isn’t always this easy, so we appreciate the company’s efforts here.

One quick tip, though: While Robo’s directions recommend you complete Wi-Fi setup after performing a test print, we recommend you go through the Wi-Fi connection process first. It’ll make your life easier, and there’s really no reason to do it at the end anyway.

Build quality and design

Robo gets high marks for the C2’s design. It’s a big improvement over the utilitarian design of the R1 – the company’s first product. While a 3D printer might never be something you’ll want as a showpiece in your living room, Robo at least has a design here that looks svelte on a tabletop.

The touchscreen on the C2 is one of our favorite features.

The C2’s beauty isn’t just skin deep, either; the machine’s construction feels sturdy as well. Weighing it at just over 20 pounds, it’s not a particularly heavy printer, but it’s still weighty and robust enough to resist shaking and shuddering while the print nozzle moves around at high speed. This ultimately leads to more accurate and consistent print results, but we’ll get into all that fun stuff in a moment.

By and large, the printer’s design is a win – though it does have a few shortcomings that we simply can’t overlook. The most egregious of these is the C2’s aforementioned unheated print bed, which forces you to use adhesive pads that need to be changed regularly to ensure adhesion. With this kind of setup, there’s no way to know when the adhesion will fail, so you’ll need to get in the habit of changing the pads regularly every so often.

Robo C2 Compared To

Monoprice Mini Delta

Ultimaker 3

FormLabs Form 2

NewMatter MOD-t

M3D Micro

MakerBot Replicator (5th Gen)

Pirate3D Buccaneer

3Doodler 2.0

3D Systems Cube

Ultimaker 2

Formlabs Form 1+

It’s also limited to a single extruder, which is a bit of a disappointment considering the fact that an increasing number of printers around the C2’s $800 price point now include dual extruder setups. To be fair, does give you the option to add a second extruder or even swap extruder modules out – but this is all sold separately.

User interface and software

The touchscreen on the C2 is one of our favorite features. Just about all the major features and functions you need to access can be found there. We did find the smaller screen a bit difficult to use, however — especially when it came time to enter in our Wi-Fi password (the keyboard was just too small). Despite this minor gripe, the actual interface itself is one of the most user-friendly of any printer we’ve ever tested.

If what you’re after is a workhorse that doesn’t require a ton of upkeep, this likely isn’t the printer for you.

As for desktop software, the C2 is designed to work with a customized version of Cura. Cura is simultaneously one of the most feature-rich and intuitive slicer programs available today, so the software isn’t difficult to use. Unfortunately you’ll need to set everything up manually, but again, Robo’s well-written directions save the day. As long as you know how to read and follow instructions, you’ll be fine.

If you’re patient enough, we highly recommend taking the additional step of installing the Octoprint plugin so that you can print directly from Cura. It’s a fair bit of work to get set up, but we think the convenience is worth the one-time trouble.

Print performance

To get a sense of how well the C2 performs, we ran it through our standard suite of test prints, along with a few random objects just to mix things up. This includes the infamous 3DBenchy torture test tugboat, and the CTRL-V benchmark – both of which are designed to highlight a printer’s strengths and weaknesses.

Ed Oswald/Digital Trends

Across all our prints, we results were admirable for a printer in this price range. Fine details came through wonderfully (especially at higher resolutions), and the C2 experienced minimal issues with tricky features like unsupported spans and overhangs. Objects were also very consistent from layer to layer. The printer suffered from almost no z-axis wobble – something that can likely be attributed to Robo’s sturdy construction.

On the whole, the C2 boasts solid print performance, but unfortunately, its otherwise admirable print jobs were too often marred by the machine’s one and only shortcoming: the unheated print bed.

Its admirable print jobs were often marred by its only shortcoming: the unheated print bed.

Because the printer’s build surface doesn’t heat up, it’s difficult to get prints to properly adhere to it – and more importantly, stay anchored until the object is complete. We found ourselves replacing the painters tape-like adhesive pads about every half dozen prints or so, because if we didn’t, the prints would lift off the build plate and screw everything up. Even when printing with rafts (support structures designed to boost bed adhesion), we weren’t always confident that the C2 would successfully complete a given print job.

In other words, while this printer prints beautifully under optimal conditions, it’s definitely not the most reliable machine we’ve ever tested.

Maintainance, reparability and upgradability

Maintenance with Robo 3D printers is extremely easy, thanks in large part to the aforementioned walkthrough wizards. No matter what goes wrong or what parameter you need to adjust, Robo’s onboard software makes it a breeze.

Software updates can be delivered to the C2 wirelessly, or can be loaded onto a USB stick and installed by opening them directly on the printer. The USB stick option is nice because you can also print directly from it too – just in case you don’t want to (or can’t) connect the printer to a Wi-Fi network.

For hardware issues, the C2 seems easy to repair (at least for the basic stuff) since, for the most part, all of its most crucial components are easy to access. Luckily, we didn’t run into any hardware trouble during our testing, but we’re confident that if we had, we could’ve fixed it ourselves. Robo provides ample troubleshooting and repair documentation on its website.

Warranty information

The Robo C2 comes with a one-year limited warranty, with replacement part service.

Our Take

Simply put, we loved the C2. It’s a great-looking and well performing printer right out of the box, and the machine’s intuitive and user-friendly interface makes it a great choice for 3D printing novices. That said, it’s definitely not perfect. Robo’s decision to leave out the crucial heated bed feature might have kept the price low, but also resulted in a printer that’s less reliable and more high-maintenance than some of its competitors.

Is there a better alternative?

At $800 dollars, the Robo C2 does provide a lot of bang for your buck – but because the 3D printing scene is so competitive right now, there are a lot of printers out there that offer similar features for a lower price.

There are a lot of printers out there that offer similar features for a lower price.

For $700, you can get your hands on Monoprice’s Maker Ultimate printer: A machine that boasts a bigger build area (7.8 x 7.8 x 6.8 inches), a heated bed, and auto-leveling functionality. That said, Monoprice’s user interface isn’t nearly as polished or approachable, and doesn’t have a touchscreen.

Another contender that’s worth mentioning is Robo’s earlier printer: the Robo R1+. The company doesn’t produce them anymore, but you can find them for sale online fairly easily. The R1+ doesn’t have any of the C2’s fancy new connectivity options or slick user interface – but it does have a heated bed and a larger build area. Depending on where you find one for sale, you can snag one of these puppies for around $500-$700.

If you’re not afraid of doing a bit more assembly, you can also get your hands on a Prusa i3 MK2 kit for about 700 bucks. Born out of the open-source RepRap project, the i3’s design was developed over years and years of testing, tuning, and perfecting from thousands of different 3D printing enthusiasts — so it’s a pretty solid little machine. It’s bigger, smarter, and more capable than the Robo C2, but you’ll have to build it yourself.

How long will it last?

We have no doubt that the C2 will give you years of trouble free service. But as we said, expect to be constantly tweaking to ensure quality prints: it’s just the reality with how relatively new 3D printing technology is. From what we understand, Robo plans to service these printers well into the foreseeable future with software and firmware updates, and considering the fact that the company still offers parts for its previous generation printers, we don’t see why it wouldn’t do so for the C2.

Should you buy it?

If you’re completely new to 3D printing and want something that’s extremely simple and approachable to use, then yes — The C2 is one of the most user-friendly machines you’ll find in the sub-$1,000 price range, and you should buy it.

If you’re more concerned with reliability and print performance, we’d recommend looking elsewhere. The fact that this printer doesn’t have a heated bed makes it less reliable than others we’ve tried. If what you’re after is a workhorse that doesn’t require a ton of upkeep, this likely isn’t the printer for you.

The $500 question: Can the Honor View 10 beat the OnePlus 5T in a camera shootout?

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

If you’ve got about $500 to spend on a new smartphone, then the Honor View 10 and the OnePlus 5T should be high up the list of devices to check out. Both are excellent value, and great performers. We’re going to take a deeper look at one key feature — the camera.

We took both phones on a day out to capture photos in a variety of situations and environments, with the goal of seeing which takes the best photos, and which camera is the most versatile. If you’re interested to see how the Honor View 10 compares to the closely-related Huawei Mate 10 Pro, we’ve also put the two against each other.

Camera specs

Before we start looking at photos, how do the two cameras compare on paper? The Honor View 10 has an f/1.8 aperture, 16-megapixel RGB lens, and a 20-megapixel monochrome lens, with phase detection auto-focus. Used together it captures bokeh-style blurred background shots (like the iPhone’s Portrait Mode), while the monochrome lens on its own takes great looking black and white photos without a filter. The Kirin 970 processor and the Neural Processing Unit (NPU) provides fast scene and object recognition, then adjusts the settings to the appropriate levels for the best picture.

The OnePlus 5T also has two camera lenses on the back — a 16-megapixel, f/1.7 aperture lens, and a second 20-megapixel lens with the same aperture. It’s not a telephoto lens, therefore the blurred background Portrait Mode shots it takes are created in a different way to the Honor View 10 and most other phones. You’ll see how in our examples shortly.

Neither have optical image stabilisation (OIS), but the OnePlus 5T has electronic image stabilization (EIS), which should in theory make it the better low-light performer.

Camera apps

The OnePlus 5T’s camera is feature-light compared to the Honor phone, and the user experience is easy to follow. You can enter video or portrait mode with a quick swipe to the left or right, and swipe up to enter the manual Pro mode. It couldn’t be easier, and it’s quick to capture images. Still, there are some options, like adding a grid, that aren’t easy to find.

Honor shares the same software as the Huawei Mate 10 Pro, and the camera app is packed full of features — from auto modes for taking pictures of the stars to an editing suite for post-picture alterations. Thankfully, it’s all easy to navigate and use. Yes, there are plenty of buttons to figure out, but it’s not confusing, and after using it for a few shots, you’ll be very familiar with it. It’s worth pointing out that if simplicity is your goal, the OnePlus 5T has the Honor View 10 beat.

Challenging light

We started out relatively early in the day, taking both phones out on a countryside walk on a very cold morning. The skies were mostly clear, but the clouds that were there presented a challenge when taking pictures. Take a look at the shot of the windmill and you’ll see how each phone handled it. It’s tough to call a winner here because the photos are quite different. Arguably, the OnePlus 5T photo is the more accurate in terms of what we saw at the time, but we like the vivid blue and moodier clouds captured by the Honor View 10. That being said, the higher contrast makes the grass look a deeper green than in the OnePlus 5T’s photo.

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Left: Honor View 10, Right: OnePlus 5T

Let’s move on to the photo of the tree and blue sky. The look is so different it’s hard to believe they were taken seconds apart. The OnePlus 5T’s HDR mode kicked in automatically, and although we manually activated it on the Honor View 10, the picture didn’t really change. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the OnePlus 5T’s picture is more accurate, while the Honor View 10’s picture is slightly hyper-real. At the same time, it’s a turnaround from the first picture — it’s the OnePlus 5T that took the more dramatic, eye-catching picture.

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Left: Honor View 10, Right: OnePlus 5T

What’s crucial here is that the OnePlus 5T took a photo we wanted to share on social media, and the Honor View 10 took only an acceptable picture that doesn’t offer anything special.

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Left: Honor View 10, Right: OnePlus 5T

Our final shot is of a tree surrounded by autumnal leaves. In an ideal world, we’d like to combine these two images together. The detail and natural color of the tree in the Honor View 10’s photo looks great, as does the background and the shade of the sky. However, the deep browns of the leaves on the ground in the OnePlus 5T’s picture better reflect the time of year, and give the picture more emotion. Forced to choose, we prefer the Honor View 10’s photo, but we’re calling this category a draw.

Bokeh/Portrait Mode

The themes established in the section above continue here. The OnePlus 5T’s lower contrast pictures hide detail but often look better, while the Honor View 10’s photos revel in the amount of detail they reveal, sometimes at the expense of realism. The goal here is to see how the bokeh modes work. The fallen tree trunk is much larger than it looks, and the Honor View 10 took longer to focus on it than the OnePlus 5T.

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Left: Honor View 10, Right: OnePlus 5T

The degree of “pop” is similar, but look closely at the spike pointing towards the top left of the photo. The OnePlus 5T has more of this in focus than the Honor View 10, and it’s the same for the moss-covered section below it. The OnePlus 5T’s different lens arrangement makes this possible. Neither picture is really better than the other, but we really do like the detail revealed by the Honor View 10.

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Left: Honor View 10, Right: OnePlus 5T

Our photo of the public footpath sign illustrates perfectly the difference between the two bokeh modes. The subject is obviously much closer in Honor View 10’s photo, and we took it at the point where it first recognized the object. The OnePlus 5T generated the effect long before this. We’ve seen the same effect when we compared the iPhone 8 Plus with the Samsung Galaxy Note 8. The Honor View 10’s superiority shines through, perfectly isolating the sign and its writing from the background.

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Left: Honor View 10, Right: OnePlus 5T

Our last bokeh picture was taken in low light, and it’s the OnePlus 5T that takes the better picture this time. The edges around the end of the fence are crisp, while the Honor View 10 struggles to maintain focus on the subject, and the OnePlus 5T’s gradual blur down the fence itself is much more attractive and natural than the Honor View 10’s attempt. We’d call this category another draw, with both cameras taking great photos, just in different situations.

Cathedral

Our ultimate destination for the day was Guildford Cathedral, a unique design 25 years in the making, that while reminiscent of traditional cathedrals, has a startlingly modern look. Staring up at the front, it’s the OnePlus 5T that wins with a detailed picture showing the color of the brickwork, the darkening clouds, and the lush grass in the foreground. It’s a great all around. The Honor View 10 suffers here, and it’s the same story as we move around the side. The blue car shows how the View 10 can’t compete with the OnePlus 5T here — the front is shrouded in darkness compared to the 5T’s photo.

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Left: Honor View 10, Right: OnePlus 5T

Once around the side of the cathedral and shooting towards the sunset, the Honor View 10 wins back a few points with its wonderful sky and ominous clouds. It even manages to pick out the little bit of blue sky the OnePlus 5T misses. The building itself is also more detailed with less shadow, making it the better picture.

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Left: Honor View 10, Right: OnePlus 5T

The cathedral is on top of a hill, and turning around on the spot gives a super view over the city. But you’d never know it if you photograph it with the Honor View 10 — it performed unexpectedly poor here. Taken at almost exactly the same time, the Honor View 10’s picture ignores the buildings and instead concentrates on the clouds and the sky. It is, without a doubt, a terrible photo. The OnePlus 5T’s picture is infinitely better.

This final performance sees the OnePlus 5T crush the Honor View 10 at the cathedral.

Low light

Does the Honor View 10’s dismal performance at the cathedral mean it can’t take decent low light pictures? Surprisingly, no, and it actually beats the OnePlus 5T when taking pictures after dark. Check the two pictures of the town hall on the middle of the street. The OnePlus 5T takes a cooler, far more blue-tinged picture that still looks good, but not on the same level as the brighter, warmer, and more detailed shot generated by the Honor View 10.

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Andy Boxall/Digital Trends

Left: Honor View 10, Right: OnePlus 5T

It was only dusk when the town hall photo was taken, but almost completely dark when we took the picture of the obelisk. The noisy, dark, and generally poor photo produced by the OnePlus 5T can’t compete with the Honor View 10’s excellent low-light image. The stone has detail, the grass has color, and there’s almost no noise at all. It’s by far the superior picture. We can’t understand how the Honor View 10 got the picture over the rooftops so wrong.

Conclusion

The OnePlus 5T has been the more consistent camera here. We began to know how it would perform, and what its strengths and weaknesses were quite quickly. The Honor View 10 was much less predictable. After one dismal picture in difficult lighting, who would have guessed that it would do well in the the low-light category?

It did, and apart from one misstep, took excellent pictures. The OnePlus 5T took our favorite shot of the day — the tree with the blue sky — and the bokeh mode is really great, but the pictures didn’t pop enough, the contrast was too low, and frequently wanted to edit the photos to improve them. We did the same with some of the Honor View 10’s pictures too, especially at the cathedral.

Camera features aren’t everything, but the monochrome mode on the View 10 is a great option, as is the Portrait mode, the editing suite, and the ease with which bokeh shots can be manipulated after taking them. The OnePlus 5T is barebones. Which would we rather carry around with us? It’s a really tough choice, but it would be the Honor View 10 for its versatility, better low light shots, and general robustness in most situations. However, we’d have never caught our favourite picture if we didn’t have the OnePlus 5T with us.

Editors’ Recommendations

• OnePlus 5T review
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• Honor 7X review

Virtual reality training ground helps robots prepare for the real world

Robots are getting better at dealing with the complexity of the real world, but they still need a helping hand when taking their first tentative steps outside of easily defined lab conditions. That’s what a new open source virtual reality training ground called AI2-THOR, created by researchers at Seattle’s Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, aims to help with. It’s an interactive VR model of real-world scenes, such as the kitchen or living room in a regular home, that allows an A.I. agent to learn to cope with our world in a way that is not only less time-consuming, but a whole lot less risky, too — for both robots and the human folk they interact with.

At present, most commercial machine learning algorithms learn about the world from data sets made up of videos and still images. That approach certainly has its uses, as a quick glance at the number of robotics-related advances in recent years will prove. However, it’s not necessarily a substitute for the opportunity to physically interact with the real world, which is where AI2-THOR comes in.

The THOR project is an acronym standing for “The House Of inteRactions.” The realistic A.I. training ground, created using the graphical engine Unity, has been in development since the summer 2016. The first version of the software offered 120 different scenes, based around kitchens, living room, bedroom, and bathroom settings. Each one features location-appropriate items to interact with, such as an openable microwave in the kitchen, as well as realistic physics models. The detail even includes such minutiae as empty and full bathtubs and sliceable apples.

In the future, the team behind AI2-THOR plans to expand it further by adding objects with non-rigid physics, letting robots get valuable practice at making beds or moving items of clothing. (Hey, we’re not giving up on our Jetsons-style dream of a robot household helper yet!)

The open-source software is already available for users, and anyone is able to download it and customize the various scenes to their specifications. Hopefully, initiatives such as this will allow robots to get even smarter while opening up the toolsets to allow this in a way that reaches those outside of high-end research labs.

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VSCO X Review

Hillary Grigonis/Digital Trends

Vintage-inspired digital presets aren’t difficult to find, but VSCO X takes the retro inspiration to a new level by designing digital filters from specific film types. Looking for Fujifilm Superia 400, or Kodak Tri-X black and white? You’ll find it scrolling through VSCO X’s filter library.

VSCO X is a paid version of the free VSCO app — which, of course, begs the question: What’s the difference, and is it really worth the $20 annual fee? We put VSCO X through the paces to see what the advanced version offers for mobile photographers.

What’s the difference between the free VSCO and VSCO X?

As the premium version of the app, VSCO X contains over 130 presets. Users on the free version can buy some of these presets in packs, but VSCO X users get all of them, right off the bat. What’s more, the Film X presets, which include Fujifilm and Kodak-inspired filters, are exclusive to VSCO X users.

VSCO X is like having dozens of different rolls of film in your pocket.

Along with the hundreds of presets, VSCO X users gain access to new features first. Of course, users won’t always know what features are coming, but whenever a new feature is released, X subscribers will be the first to see it. Currently, X subscribers have early access to video editing tools that are not part of the free app.

While the free app includes some filters and custom photo controls, a VSCO X subscription comes with everything — all the filters and all the tools. VSCO also has an education series exclusive to X users with tips and how-tos. Of course, it also includes the annual subscription price that works itself out to be less than $2 per month, but could still be a turn off for some users.

VSCO X User Interface

The app opens on the Studio page, while icons at the bottom navigate to the app’s social community and the user profile. From the Studio section, mobile photographers can upload a photo from the camera roll or use VSCO’s built-in camera. The built-in camera offers manual features, including exposure compensation, shutter speed, manual focus, and even the option of shooting RAW files which will grant you more flexibility in editing. Along with shooting stills, users can switch to the DSCO mode to create a GIF, then apply a limited selection of filter options to the animated image.

The built-in camera option is nice — but the reason to opt for an X subscription is inside the apps’ editing options, including access to 130 filters. And as awesome as that sounds, it does come with the challenge of sorting through all of them. While the sheer number of options feels a bit daunting at first, VSCO has built in several tools to make finding the right filter easier.

First, filters are arranged in collection sets — for example, all the Kodak film options are together. Next, you can save preferred filters as your favorites. Favorites will always show up first among the filter options, but if that’s not enough, you can also hide entire groups of filters to reduce the amount of scrolling required. If you don’t care for, say, the Oakley sunglasses filters or the the crazy colors of Distoria, you never have to see them again.

The sheer number of options feels daunting, but VSCO has tools to make finding the right filter easier.

Working with filters is straightforward. A small thumbnail shows a preview of what that filter option looks like on the selected photo, along with a shortened version of the filter’s name. Tapping the filter applies the effect to the image, while tapping again displays more options (as well as filter’s exact name). From here, you can adjust the intensity and warmth of the filter.

However, real film reacts differently to varying conditions in the scene, such as the color temperature of lights. A digital photo, on the other hand, can be white balanced for different conditions, and digital filters are more uniform in the adjustments from one image to the next. To cross that gap, a “character” slider allows you to access some of the variants inside that film type. The character slider brings the digital filters even closer to mimicking the actual film that inspired them.

At the bottom navigation menu, the next option is for the custom adjustments. VSCO X includes all the usual options you would expect, along with a few options that are a bit harder to find on mobile platforms, including two skew crop options and a skin tone slider. Other editing options include exposure, contrast, straighten, crop, sharpen, clarity, saturation, highlights, shadows, temperature, tint, vignette, grain, fade, shadows tint, highlights tint, and borders. As the adjustments are applied, the changes show up in real time on the image. The exact control scheme depends on the tool selected, but a majority use simple sliders. The crop tool allows for custom sizes or selecting from the most common aspect ratios.

Hillary Grigonis/Digital Trends

Next up are photo recipes, which are essentially custom filters. After editing a photo in a style that you particularly like, you can save that image as a recipe that can be applied to future photos in a single tap.

Like filters, individual editing tools can also be organized. Tapping and dragging a tool allows you to rearrange adjustments into a custom toolbox. For example, if your photo style favors warmth, you can move the white balance option so that it’s the first tool you see. Recipes can also be organized in a similar drag-and-drop manner.

The VSCO look

Compared to many other film-inspired filters, VSCO X’s film presets feel less forced and look more like real film. The presets use the green-magenta color shifts found in some film types without making the tint overpowering. Contrast isn’t faded to the point of making the photo look like it’s been sitting in direct sunlight for the past 20 years. Instead, VSCO X captures the look of freshly processed film. Several of the presets are also included at different “speeds,” which factors in the added grain of higher ISO films. The Fujifilm and Kodak collections are our favorites for those reasons, and both are exclusive to X subscribers.

With VSCO X, filters can also be applied to videos. As with photos, the changes are previewed in real-time, and the only difference is that videos take longer to export and save to your camera roll rather than inside the app. Some tools, like crop and skew, are missing on the video side. There also aren’t any tools specific to video, like stabilization or the ability to stitch multiple clips together. But, the ability to apply film effects to video is quite unique, making VSCO X a good final stop for videos that you have already cut in other programs.

As with the free version, VSCO X lets you post your creations to the VSCO community. We won’t spend much time on this aspect, since it isn’t new, but the platform can serve as a place for inspiration and feedback from other like-minded users.

VSCO X offers excellent film filters that don’t feel so fake

Film-inspired effects are everywhere, but those in VSCO X are step above in terms of both quality and flexibility. VSCO X brings exclusive filters designed after specific film types, and the Fujifilm and Kodak presets are truly great. Being able to apply those same filters to video is just icing on the cake.

Overall, VSCO X is an excellent option for mobile photographers who want access to vintage filters that aren’t overdone, difficult to use, or too inflexible. Digital filters won’t replace the experience of shooting with actual film, but VSCO X makes for the closest digital imitation of film we’ve seen yet.

The $20 annual subscription will likely keep some people at bay, but it is reasonable for the features included and will likely be a no-brainer purchase for the right photographers. VSCO offers a seven-day free trial so you can test out the exclusive features to see if membership is worth it for you.

DT Editors’ Rating: 4.5/5

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Watch a drone lose control and crash onto Apple Park’s solar roof

Drone flyovers have been offering us a look at the steady development of Apple Park — Apple’s striking new headquarters — ever since construction workers broke ground on the project a couple of years ago.

Monthly updates from the site in Cupertino, California, came from a number of drone pilots, among them Matthew Roberts, whose most recent outing revealed that Apple has pretty much completed work on its so-called “spaceship” campus, save for a bit of landscaping.

This week Roberts posted a flyover video that’s a little different to his usual work, as it tells the story of another pilot who recently lost his quadcopter while trying to capture footage of Apple Park.

The unnamed operator told Roberts that his machine suddenly fell from the sky during a flight, and asked if he could help him to locate it.

Roberts obliged, taking his own drone on a flight over the campus, this time on the hunt for another quadcopter rather than dramatic footage of the remarkable donut-shaped building that forms the centerpiece of Apple’s new headquarters.

Roberts’ video includes the actual crash footage (above), a cached version pulled from the pilot’s mobile device. It shows POV footage of the drone flying over the campus before suddenly and inexplicably falling from the sky and landing on Apple’s solar roof. Next, we see footage from Roberts’ drone as he goes in search of the precise location of the crashed machine. We discover it apparently intact and seemingly lodged in between some of the panels.

No attempt is made to recover the damaged drone, though we’ve seen it done before — some efforts more successful than others — using tethers and hooks.

During the construction phase of Apple Park, there were obviously far fewer people on site and many of the flyovers were made during quiet times of the week. Now with thousands of Apple employees wandering about the campus, the company may not be so happy to have drones flying overhead, with this latest episode highlighting how things can sometimes go badly wrong in the air.

You never know, if any more drones come down on the campus, we might start hearing reports of even more Apple employees walking into glass walls as they look skyward for the malfunctioning flying machines.

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U.S. stays in fifth in global 4G availability rankings, increases in 4G speed

According to OpenSignal’s latest State of LTE report, the country with the best 4G availability is South Korea — yet again. While the U.S. is still in fifth place for availability, it saw an increase in 4G speed.

OpenSignal monitors the performance of mobile networks using crowdsourced data with the OpenSignal app. The app compares the performance of networks in surrounding areas and tests the speed of the mobile connections.

This quarter’s report collected more than 58 billion measurements from more than 4 million devices from October 1 to December 29. The analysis highlights 4G LTE speed, 4G availability, and how other countries ranked in comparison.

While the U.S. hasn’t moved up from the fifth spot, 4G availability has increased in the country since last quarter from 86.94 percent to 90.32 percent. There is now a total of five countries that have 4G availability greater than 90 percent — which means South Korea and Japan are no longer the only ones.

Even though the availability is rising, the LTE speeds have failed to see a significant increase the past few global reports. Countries have been close to hitting the 50 Mbps mark, but seem to hover over 45 Mbps. But there were some notable increases in speed such as in the Netherlands and Spain, along with Canada.

The U.S. has also managed to regain its strength after it saw a major decrease in 4G speeds due to AT&T and Verizon’s reintroduction of unlimited data plans. The decrease was most likely due to network congestion caused by an increase in customers, or data usage from already existing customers — which resulted in the average connection speed for all customers to drop.

In an OpenSignal report from last August, both Verizon’s LTE download connection dropped 12 percent — from 16.9 Mbps to 14.9 Mbps — while AT&T was less extreme at 12.9 Mbps from its previous 13.9 Mbps. But as a whole, the country has gone from 13.98 Mbps in last quarter’s report to 16.31 Mbps, which is a sizable increase.

For now, the best performers in speed are Singapore, Netherlands, and Norway, who range from 41.20 Mbps to 44.31 Mbps. It’s important to note that while the U.S. was one of the first countries to take on 4G, a country’s speed is dependent on a variety of factors — including regulations, the economy, and technology.

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YouTuber explains mechanics behind those amazing SpaceX rocket launch videos

As with pretty much all rocket launches these days, space fans are spoiled with stunning footage of the start of each mission as the rocket soars into the sky at incredible speed.

If you’ve ever wondered how the pictures are captured, then a video from new YouTuber Primal Space does a great job in explaining.

The video kicks off by showing the sort of setup required if you were trying to get the same kind of footage using a regular DSLR camera. First up, you’d need something like a 10,000mm lens (sorry, you’ll have to build it yourself) for the rocket to fill the frame for a good part of its ascent.

But even then, forget tracking it manually. A massive focal length likes that means every little movement would be magnified to such an extent that your footage would be a total mess, as a clip in the video nicely shows.

Having explained just how accurate and precise the tracking has to be, Primal Space’s video goes on to explain about the kind of technology used for today’s launches.

Each of the main launch pads in the U.S. is surrounded by several long-range tracking cameras that look more like missile launchers than photography equipment. In fact, there is a warfare connection here, as each setup is actually part of a Kineto tracking mount initially developed by the military to track aircraft and missiles.

In the early ’70s, rigs like this would be controlled by skilled operators, Primal Space explains. But as you’d expect, many of the tracking functions now take place automatically, enabling reliable footage of every rocket launch.

And all that detailed footage isn’t simply to entertain audiences sitting at home. For the engineers behind the missions, the videos provide vital information on the state of the launch and the rocket’s performance as it climbs in the sky.

“NASA uses a mix of digital and film cameras on these mounts,” the narrator says. “The short-range tracking cameras make use of a high-speed frame rate and shutter speeds, which are useful for rocket companies to analyze their rockets in great detail during the launch sequence.”

Such footage helped investigators to work out the cause of the Space Shuttle Columbia disaster in 2003, leading to changes to enhance the shuttle’s safety for subsequent flights.

The video also notes how the launch pads now have the very latest video technology for amazingly detailed live-streams of today’s rocket launches.

“The method behind filming and broadcasting a rocket launch is actually very difficult,” the narrator says. “As the technology of the tracking systems and the cameras continue to improve, we can look forward to seeing more amazing shots like this.”

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Linka upgrades its smart bike lock that lets you make easy pit stops

Linka

The Linka smart bike lock first grabbed our attention last summer as a great solution for those times when you just want to make a quick pit stop without having to fiddle around with separate chain locks and the like.

The Oakland, California, team behind the smartphone-controlled Linka is now prepping the launch of a new version — the Linka Leo — offering several enhancements and additional features.

Just like the original $169 Linka, the Linka Leo comprises a main unit that you attach to the frame over the back wheel of your bike. Once it’s set up, you simply press a button on the lock to make the security shackle slide across whenever you park up.

As with the debut version, the Leo conveniently auto-unlocks when you approach, so long as it detects your smartphone via Bluetooth, that is.

Both locks also have a siren alarm if someone tampers with your bike when you’re away from it, though at 120 decibels, the Leo’s alarm is 10 decibels louder than its predecessor. If you’re far away from your bike or inside a store where you can’t hear the alarm, you’ll receive an alert to your smartphone that’s something’s up. The original Linka could only send alerts over a maximum distance of 120 meters, but the new Leo lock claims to have no limit at all.

Another big addition to the revamped Linka is GPS theft tracking so you can locate your bicycle if a thief picks it up and throws it on the back of a truck. In such a scenario, a map on your phone will pinpoint your bike to within three meters of its location. It seems like a useful feature, but what if the thief removes the lock, which they’ll presumably have to do if they want to use the bike or sell it on. If that happens, the best chance you’ll have of finding your two-wheeler is if you can track it immediately after it’s taken, before the thief has a chance to discard the lock.

A notable improvement for the Leo is battery life, which now boasts two and a half years over the original Linka’s 16 months. As for design, a larger version will be offered with the Leo, making it compatible with ebikes.

For added security, the company already offers a couple of chain locks for $30 and $40, compatible with the original lock, so you can secure your bike to a fixed object like a pole.

For the Leo, it’s launching three “Loop” chains that perform the same function, except that these ones include a built-in power bank to ensure your bike lock stays charged for much longer.

If you’re wondering what happens if your smartphone battery dies or you lose your phone soon after parking up, then fear not. Both the Linka and its successor can be unlocked by manually inputting a four-digit code on the lock itself.

Overall, the Linka Leo looks like a decent upgrade on the original device, though we’re keen to see the price tag before making a final judgment. The Leo is set for launch in the spring, and you can sign up on Linka’s website for the latest information on a specific date.

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