Ulefone MIX 5.5 inch with Triple cameras 4GB RAM 64GB ROM Review

Lovely phone I really like it, I bought my son the exact same phone for Christmas after he smashed his iphone and talked him into giving Android a go as I was converted several years ago and he really loves it, I have been filled with phone envy ever since so when I saw it on offer from this seller £30 below what I paid before I decided I needed an upgrade and went for it.

The phone arrived in a nice and simple Ulefone branded lift top box with the phone on top, manual, sim release pin, little metal phone stand, charge lead and retractable pin three pin USB plug in the bottom. This has a simple manual with good clear and detailed illustrations giving you all the basics you need to know.

I wanted to keep all the apps and data off my old phone so went through the setup selecting ‘Keep your apps & data’ then ‘Another Android device’ which then took me through a simple step by step on screen menu to restore a backup copy from my old phone and after I inserted a sim card and a micro SD card I was soon up and running, I used a micro SD card to test the feature but plan to run it with duel sims so tested that as well which worked fine even setting up different ringtones for them using MP3’s something iphone won’t allow no idea why.

I set up the fingerprint recognition using three of my fingers so I could open it with either hand and also use my thumb on my right hand, I like the fact the finger print recognition is on the front of the screen as it’s on the back of my old phone and I have to take it out of the case to use it. I browsed the net and ran a few videos on YouTube which all worked great giving a great sound and very clear and clean display. I ran a few games and was pleased to see they ran flawlessly without any lag or stuttering with very responsive and accurate movement on the touch screen.

I tested out the camera which was superb one of the reasons I had phone envy as I have seen some of the shots my son has taken with his and I found a nice little free app to test the phone running it with everything checking out and it was working great, I decided I needed a case even though it comes with a rubber case fitted I tend to slip my phone in my front pocket when I go out so wanted a wraparound case and found one I liked on a well-known auction site for £3.50 delivered (bargain) and it had a cut out that fitted the camera everything I wanted.

Overall this is a really nice phone with 4gb of ram and 64gb of rom it’s fast and smooth with a great camera, fingerprint recognition on the front, a great display and sound with the ability to use duel sims or sim and a micro SD card and the reason I have given it full marks. I have added a video and will also add some pictures showing how easy it is to set up and going through some of the functions such as adding the fingerprints and running a phone test.

Price: £119
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Cigarette Socket AC 220v Mains to DC 12v 5A 60W Power Inverter Review

I have a few gadgets is use in my car that I also use in my house the main one being the car vacuum which I find ideal for vacuuming round my desk and cleaning out the dusk from in and around my desktop PC case, for the last 10 years I have been using a big block plugin convertor which had worked reasonably well although I wasn’t sure how safe it was as it got very hot and last week it finally stopped working all together so I needed another.

I had a good look round at different ones and the reason I went for this one is I didn’t want another socket based one, it had over and under working voltage protection and short circuit protection, it was available on prime and had good review feedback.

The unit works well and I have tested a few of my gadgets in it without any problems, the only negatives I have found with it are I would have liked a thicker/stronger cable on the cigarette female end for added protection and the cable from the three pin plug socket either being longer or shorter as it’s not long enough from a 4tf high wall socket to sit flat on the floor and has excessive cable if it sits on the side next to the socket, overall a very handy device that works well and I have given it four stars for that reason.

Price: £13.99

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Nitecore D2 DigiCharger for Rechargeable Battery with LCD Display Review

I purchased this as I am a e-cig user and the two main modboxes I use have removable 18650 batteries and although one of them has a charge socket the other relies of external charging and I had been swapping the batteries between the two when I wanted to charge but decided to get this along with a second set of batteries so I could just swap out for a fresh set when they depleted.

It arrived in a nice branded box with a sheet of printed instructions which covered all uses and modes although the print is very small and quite hard to read, I have given it a good test charging two different types of 18650 batteries, 2 x 3.7v 3500mah and 2 x 3.7 3100mah and two different sets of AA batteries, one set 1.2v 2800mah the other 1.2v 2700mah, I then charged a 18650 3.7v 3000mah and a AA 1.2v 2800mah to test charging two different types at the same time. All charged well and were easy to insert and remove, the display screen is good providing all the information I personally need and easy to switch between slots, the charge time averaged 6 hours 25mins on the 18650 batteries and 5 hours 20mins on the AA batteries.

The charge time is quite a bit longer than a standard charger but I do understand the slow charging might help extend the life of your batteries a bit and was pleased that none of the batteries got hot while charging just slightly warm and the long charge is not really a big issue for me as I am never in a rush for them.

Overall a neat little unit with a good display that allows you to monitor the battery charging process, this is not the charger for you if you are looking for a rapid charging unit.

Price: £14.30
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OUKITEL K5, 4G 5.7 inch Smartphone with Android 7.0 Review

My daughter cracked the screen on her phone a few weeks ago and although it still worked and had not disrupted the pixels it is still a bit of a mess, I looked into getting the screen replaced but due to the cost it really seemed better to get her another phone after making her suffer the broken one for a few weeks :)

As my daughter listens to a lot of music on her phone along with surfing and social media she needed something smooth, fast and that would have the ability to extend the storage by taking a micro SD card and this looked ideal giving the option of duel sim or sim and a micro SD card which she is now using.

The phone arrived in an orange branded OUKITEL box nicely packed and presented with the instructions and lead in the bottom along with already being fitted with a rubber bumper case for added protection. After unpacking it I said I would set it all up for her and put all her music on a micro SD card for her which gained a ‘thanks dad’ high praise indeed.

Setting it up was very simple just running through a few options most of which I skipped for my daughter to set up her personal settings and then went on to give it a good test going through all the features, first impressions where it’s quite heavy and feels around the same weight as a iphone 6 with a similar look and lightning fast flicking through the menus, the first thing I did was to test out the duel sims although it isn’t something she will be using I wanted to make sure it was all working smoothly if she ever needed it.

Duel sims work perfectly and it gives the ability to set a different ringtone to callers and unlike the iphone it’s a simple case of selecting a music track or ring tone the phone and assigning it to the caller something apple don’t allow, I rang each sim number and it switches automatically with no messing about, I connected it to the home wireless which was very simple and did a bit of surfing on it all very fast and smooth watching some videos on YouTube and reading through the BBC website.

The menu is very clean and easy to navigate with features such as switching the wallpaper almost instant, I got my daughter to set up her finger print to open the phone and also added mine as you can add several finger prints for opening the phone and it seems to work flawlessly or at least I couldn’t get it to fail and it opened every time.

The camera is really impressive and I took it outside to test out the panoramic feature which is extremely impressive with the results giving a picture I have not been able to see any flaws or joins in, the front camera is also very impressive but I didn’t post any pictures as with my ugly mug I didn’t want to frighten anyone :)

After finishing setting it all up and filling my daughters micro SD card and fitting her sim it was handed over with warnings about looking after it, she won’t get another one blah blah blah and she absolutely loves it, keeps raving about the speed and how great the sound and display are compared to her old phone.

• 18:9 Full Screen 2.0 The screen edge is revolutionary narrowed by another 12%, offering more pure viewing experience on the 18:9 full display. The moment you light up the OUKITEL K5, you will find that this is what the full screen really should be.
• Dual-lens Rear Camera OUKITEL K5 prepares a 13MP and a 2MP secondary lens for the rear camera, offering SLR shooting experience. For the front camera, it gets 5MP 80°wide angle camera for shooting.
• Dual curved design Meets IML Craft OUKITEL K5 4G smartphone gets 2.5D curved screen and 3D curved battery cover. With poly-carbonated and IML craft, creating a stunning 3D flowing battery cover and mellow edge.
• XLocker & Large Battery Lock your SIM free smartphone as well as APPs by the press fingerprint of K5, safe and professional. It features 4000mAh long lasting battery. Together with the intelligent power consumption management system, K5 offers longer using time.
• Chinoiserie Style K5 combines Chinese classic ceramic element, modern 3D space design and fashionable IML craft, creating a delicate elegant art.

Overall this is a very nice phone, fast and smooth, easy and simple menu system, huge battery capacity with my daughter saying she only charges it every few days compared with twice a day with her old phone, great quality cameras with a nice camera app offering loads of features, no messing about with complicated interfaces when you want to add or change anything it’s just a simple case of plugging it into the USB port of your PC and you have full access or dropping stuff to micro SD card and inserting that. I’m impressed with it and my daughter loves it so it gets full marks from me.

Price: £119.99
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CHUWI Hi13 13.5" 2-in-1 Windows10 Tablet PC 4GB RAM 64GB ROM Review

As I work from home I am sitting at my desktop PC for up to 14 hours a day and wanted to get myself a tablet that would allow me a bit more freedom from my desk to move about a bit more while still being connected to the net and able to do a bit of browsing but also being practical enough to be used for work, I don’t like the small screen tablets and didn’t want a ipad due to it being so limited and the way it controls the choice of what will run on it so thought this looked ideal.

It arrived in a big square branded box all nice and tightly packed and has a good solid feel to it, I started it up and the screen is great with a very clear display and the choice of either using it in Windows 10 mode or tablet mode. After connecting the wireless to my home network I started the inevitable windows updates which didn’t take too long and everything rebooted fine although I had to add the virtual keyboard back to the taskbar which is a simple case of long pressing the taskbar and selecting it from the options.

This tablet is certainly very fast and smooth, I have been using it far more than I thought I every would running YouTube videos, surfing the net and social media but I have also been able to do quite a bit of work on it that I would normally be sitting at my desktop PC doing and using the micro SD card slot to transfer a multitude of things between the two all very fast and smooth.

The camera is very good and the windows camera program comes with a built in zoom as standard, I recorded some footage from the screen with a capture but I think with the conflict between the recording program I used and the onscreen video framerate it failed to record properly so I have added the actual footage taken at the end of my video.

The tablet has USB-C so I was able to plug a hub I have giving me three additional USB ports, HDMI out and a hardwire network port which works very well and this also allowed me to connect a wireless keyboard and mouse which was instantly recognised and ready to use. I connected up my Bluetooth speaker very easily which gave me an additional sound boost for listening to a bit of music and also very clear and stable.

Overall I am really pleased with this purchase it’s a really nice tablet, the screen resolution is great, it runs really smoothly, easy to switch between Windows 10 and tablet mode, very large battery capacity so masses of use before it needed charging, the 13.5” screen is ideal for my uses and with USB-C easy to connect whatever I want. This is a lot more than just a tablet for surfing and social media and capable of doing a lot more and the reason it gets full marks from me.

Price: £312.99
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