Here are our favourite new gadgets of 2021

Note: This feature was first published on 31 December 2021.

A very Happy New Year from everyone at HardwareZone!

The end of the year is naturally a time for reflection and contemplation. And despite all that is going on in the world, we have had no shortage of cool devices and gadgets. 

Here are our favourite picks from 2021. There's a ground-breaking new notebook, a clever coffee-maker, a new chip that aims to change computing, a keyboard that uses beams of light to detect key actuation, and more.

We hope you enjoy reading about our picks and see you next year!

Sony WF-1000XM4 true wireless earbuds

With so many true wireless stereo earbuds (TWS) in the market, why is the Sony WF-1000XM4 my favourite?

For one, I was drawn to its excellent noise-cancellation features. It's almost a must for commuting, or when writing articles, and many other situations that need to be noise-free. The predecessor to the WF-1000XM4 was already excellent at cutting out sounds from traffic and other commuters, so the improved noise cancellation on 1000XM4 is just what I wanted.

Being very much into audio products also meant appreciating clean, crisp quality, and the 1000XM4 delivers on that. Its size belies its ability to sound good. I wouldn't trade the 1000XM4 away – not even for its predecessor.

Everything else about the earbud is the cherry on top of the cake: Sony reduced its charging case size, making it easier to carry in our pockets. The touch controls are better, so there's less fumbling with the device as compared to its predecessor when changing songs on the go. It has a premium design and feel, and has a great fit for comfortable wear.

While it's not the best in every category, the combination of all its great points makes it ideal for my usage – in short-to-medium bursts for full concentration, or when getting from one point to the next.

When you take all the lovely bits about the WF-1000XM4 together, it's easy to see why it's a favourite. When paired with my various data-driven subscriptions (Netflix, Disney+, Spotify Premium, etc.), it also made perfect sense to give the content excellent-sounding audio in a form factor that encourages portable consumption at its best.

Another favourite feature is the WF-1000XM4's ability to pair with modern Sony TVs for uninterrupted immersion in shows on the big screen. When I tried it with its predecessor during Sony's TV launch, it felt like something from the future, made for a new way of life where you can enjoy personal, quality audio inside and outside of the home.

A year has gone by and the Sony WF-1000XM4 (S$379) still holds up as a yardstick to measure every TWS against. Given how great it is, I also certainly look forward to the next earbud seeking to de-throne this one. But, until then, Sony has the true wireless experience in spades - and for some time to come.

Read our review here.

Pricing and availability information here.

— Liu Hongzuo, Senior Tech Writer

Apple 6th-generation iPad Mini

As the owner of a 4th-generation iPad Mini, I didn’t think I had to wait four long years for Apple to completely redesign it. 

Finally announced in September, the 6th-generation iPad Mini arrived with a fresh design, Apple's blazing fast A15 Bionic processor, upgraded cameras, USB-C connectivity, a larger screen, plus 5G connectivity and support for Apple's second-generation Apple Pencil.

It was truly a breath of fresh air and I ordered it the very night it became available. And since I’ve had it, minor niggles like the price and the lack of a headphone jack aside, I love my new iPad.

USB-C connectivity is just so much easier. I can’t wait for the iPhone to get this too! It makes so much sense to swap over to this standard.

Without the Home button, it feels brighter and larger. I now have 8.3 inches of real estate, with a higher resolution to match (2266 x 1488 pixels), so visually I just seem to see more when I watch my streaming content in the still small form factor.

And my content streams with little interruption thanks to the fast 5G connectivity when I’m outside and the ever-reliable Wi-Fi for home and office.  

Read our news on the launch here.

Find out our real thoughts in the review here. 

— Ken Wong, Senior Tech Writer

Razer Huntsman V2 Analog

The Razer Huntsman V2 may not be a winner in terms of practicality or cost-savings, but for me at least, it's been the most memorable effort to push some innovation in the gaming keyboard market.

The V2 Analog features contactless optical switches, contactless meaning it doesn't use the traditional metal contacts for keypress sensing. Instead, it uses a beam of light to sense actuation, and, for the V2 Analog, it's able to track how far down a key has been pressed, essentially meaning pressure sensitivity.

This provides a host of benefits, including smoothness from the lack of metal contacts, to niche, gaming-centric features like dual-step actuation. But the most intriguing case is being able to set your own actuation point, between 1.5mm and 3.6mm, allowing you to tweak it to your liking. You can adjust the actuation point based on how heavy you type, and even set different points for key clusters like the WASD or arrow keys. It grants you a certain customisability that traditional contact-based designs don't.

None of this is really new, as the Wooting One of 2017 and Steelseries Apex Pro of 2019 also featured contactless switches adjustable actuation. And even the Wooting Two HE, released earlier this year, features a greater range of 0.1mm all the way to 4.0mm. 

But with the V2 Analog being easy-to-get and coming from a near universally-known brand, it hopefully continues this trend of innovation, and with its predecessors, heralds some big shifts in the mainstream gaming keyboard space. 

Read our review of the Razer Huntsman V2 Analog here.

— Glenn Chua, Intern

Apple 14-inch MacBook Pro 

The last MacBook Pro was a compromised machine. Sure, you could say that for any notebook but the compromises Apple made were ill-judged. So imagine my joy when Apple finally announced the redesigned 14-inch MacBook Pro. It really is a professional’s dream notebook.

Let’s start with the performance. It’s light years ahead of any other notebook in its class, and you need very high-end desktop processors and graphics cards to match what the M1 Max chip is capable of. And despite all that power, it can easily last all day on battery if all you are doing is browsing the web, answering emails, and taking Zoom calls.

And then there’s the fantastic mini-LED screen. It’s slightly larger now, and it’s super bright, accurate, and vivid. The rest of the notebook is excellent too. The keyboard works, the trackpad remains ginormous and fantastic, the speakers are unbelievably good, and we now have a proper HDMI port and SD card reader, along with multiple USB-C Thunderbolt 4 ports.

Yes, it’ll leave a huge hole in your pocket, but I guarantee you that it will be money well spent. 

Read my review of the 14-inch MacBook Pro here.

Kenny Yeo, Associate Editor

Lian Li O11 Dynamic EVO PC casing

The Lian Li PC-O11 Dynamic EVO was launched just a little while ago, with Singapore getting stocks of them sometime next month (according to its distributor, Corbell). But it is already taking the PC enthusiasts community by storm - and for good reasons.

At a glance, the Dynamic EVO looks not that much different from the extremely popular and original PC-O11 but inside of the casing is where all the magic happens.

For starters, the case is now "reversible". So you can orient the case such that its motherboard tray and glass panel faces the left, allowing you to place the casing on the left side of your table and display your internals in all its RGB glory. Lian Li has also made the new Dynamic EVO to be extremely modular, even if it's not very clear from the outside. You can, for example, place the external I/O ports in any direction below the casing.

Inside, you can place your GPU not only horizontally, but also vertically near the front of the casing. There's a slight drawback if you opt to place the GPU here because, one, your graphics card's display outputs are not as easily accessible, and secondly, it seems like that placement also restricts motherboard sizes to no more than standard ATX types. You can still, of course, use an E-ATX motherboard as long as you don't fix your graphics card in the upright position.

Play

Check out the video above that shows you how the new PC-O11 Dynamic EVO casing works. Personally, it's very exciting for me, and I can't wait for our review sample to arrive.

Aaron Yip, Lifestyle & Gaming Editor

The Morning Machine

The Morning Machine is my favourite gadget of 2021, and not just because I like to drink coffee.

You see, The Morning Machine is a Nespresso-compatible capsule coffee machine. It takes Nespresso Originaline capsules, now a burgeoning third-party market that ranges from large retail chains to your favourite local speciality coffee roaster. Like many Kickstarter projects, The Morning Machine set out to solve a perceived problem, but unlike many Kickstarter projects, there was actually a niche in the market it could fill, and boy does it deliver.

The Morning Machine marries the simplicity of Nespresso with the complexity of a professional robot barista. It features a built-in scale, dual thermal sensors with a PID controller, and a patent-pending pressure control function called the Intermittent Wave Brewing System that basically gives you complete control of how you can brew your coffee. Through the Morning app, you can access various roaster recipes for specific capsules, or tweak and create your own recipes to your heart's content. It's also a smart machine with a built-in water TDS meter, auto-voltage pump calibration, cup sensors, touch controls, Wi-Fi and app support with regular OTA updates.

But don't let all these features scare you. If you're not as adventurous, or just lazy in the morning, you can also make coffee with 1 button just like a regular Nespresso.

The icing on the cake? It's also considered a Singaporean product. The Morning Machine is the brainchild of Leon Foo of PPP Coffee (and Chye Seng Huat Hardware cafe) fame and Andre Chanco, of Yardstick Coffee in the Philippines. 

You can watch my full Morning Machine video review here. I drink all the recipes and directly compare it with a standard Nespresso machine too.

— Zachary Chan, Editor

Intel 12th Gen Core processor - Alder Lake

While Intel has been comfortably churning out pretty decent mobile processors, the last few years have been harsh on the desktop side of things with AMD's Ryzen processors clawing back hard, not only in value for money, but even raw performance. Intel's 10th Gen Core and 11th Gen Core desktop processor offerings were starting to look long in the tooth even if they've continuously been optimizing them for performance per watt efficiency, squeezing in dedicated silicon to speed up AI tasks and adding in new instructions to support them. They even came with USB and Thunderbolt advancements, but it was ultimately lacklustre, to say the least. Clearly, Intel's manufacturing process has hit a hitch and left Intel vulnerable in making the necessary advancements to leapfrog their competition.

That all finally changed with the arrival of Intel's Alder Lake architecture this year in the form of the Intel 12th Gen Core processor. With an all-new scalable SoC architecture utilising the first-ever high-performance hybrid-core design (through a set of Performance and Efficiency cores) on the new Intel 7 processor technology, the 12th Gen Core was bristling with advancements like smarter, wider, deeper and more efficient pipelining, an updated cache architecture at all levels, advanced smart power management controller, a new Matrix Engine to turbocharge AI acceleration, and Intel Thread Director technology that works in tandem with Windows 11 to dynamically assign instructions/threads to the most ideal core for the task at hand. And that's not yet even factoring in other forward-looking technologies implemented at the platform level such as Wi-Fi 6E, and the first to boast PCIe 5.0 and DDR5 memory technology. 

Simply put, the 12th Gen Core processors are made to take PC gamers and content creators to new heights and with a platform that's choke-full of new technologies to ensure it's not going to be obsolete any time soon. It has the performance to prove its worth too and is without a doubt one of the most important launches of 2021 for the HardwareZone team.

Don't forget to also check out our detailed feature on all things new with memory, overclocking, platform and cooling matters if you're keen on getting on board the 12th Gen Core train.

— Vijay Anand, Editor-in-Chief

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