Reviews - page 87

Best List: Reference X20i In-Ear Headphones by Klipsch

Have you ever wondered whether a pair of $550 earbuds is worth the price? I have, but never really had the scratch to put it to the test.

Klipsch, however, sent me a pair of their high-end earbuds, the Reference X20i In-Ear Headphones, to test. When I opened the wooden box and slid the headphones out of their leather pouch, then slipped their oval-shaped eartips into my sound holes, I went to the Star Wars: The Force Awakens soundtrack. The orchestral music seemed like a great way to see if these really expensive headphones match their price tag.

It’s an age of abundance in the iOS gaming scene, with everyone from Apple to indie enthusiast blogs weighing in on what the best games are for our beloved iOS platform.

We’re here to focus on the best mobile games we have actually played and loved, rather than just the blockbusters everyone’s already heard of. If we kept a game on our iPhone for more than a few days and dug right in on a regular basis, it’s on the list.

Here are Cult of Mac staffers’ choices for the 10 best iOS games of 2015.

Best List: The ONE Light smart keyboard

Who doesn’t want to play piano? Learning to tickle the ivories must be right up there with writing the great American novel: Many of us have a hankering to become more musical.

The fantastic $299 ONE Light smart keyboard is the way to go if you want a piano that will show you how to play without hiring a teacher.

Best List: Trace tracker for snow sports and surfing

You can track your every mogul experience, tree run and back-scratcher with this tiny disc of a tracker attached to your skis or snowboard.

Using inertial and GPS sensors packed into a miniature hockey puck package (with all-day battery life), the Trace tracker captures all the stats you need to give you the ultimate playback of your day in the powder.

2015 brought us a souped-up Apple TV, so it’s great news that the same year yielded plenty of high-quality entertainment to watch on the fourth-generation device.

From tenured favorites like ’60s Madison Avenue masterpiece Mad Men to the arrival of smash hits like Mr. Robot, there was no shortage of great entertainment gracing our screens.

In our humble opinions, these were the best TV shows of 2015.

Best List: Overture wallet case by Moshi

I love wallet cases. I love the convenience of carrying everything together in one place. For over a year, I’ve exclusively used Overture folio-style wallet cases by Moshi — first a Sahara Beige model, now a Steel Black one.

I love the new one even more, because black goes with everything.

Mac games aren’t as numerous as iOS games, but they tend to be a bit more expensive, making impulse purchases a rare thing. How do you know which ones to spend your money on?

If you’re looking to stuff your stocking with the finest of games for our favorite platform, look no further. We play them all so you don’t have to, and we tell you which are the best ones to grab.

These are Cult of Mac’s picks for best new Mac games of 2015.

Just in time for the holidays is an impressive sleeve cover from Inateck that fits both the 12.9-inch iPad Pro and all 13.3-inch models of the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro with Retina Display. It’s up to you which one you pick to keep close when you’re moseying around.

If you were quick to get on board with the iPad Pro, you’re probably loyal enough to Apple that you own a MacBook too. With this sleeve you don’t have to worry about swapping out cases and accessories when you have to choose just one to accompany you on your travels.

It gets better: the sleeve transforms into a stand that accommodates either the iPad or laptop. Made from synthetic felt, the sleeve manages to be multipurpose while also extremely affordable.

Whether you play it fast or slow, Quadrantic might become your new puzzling obsession.

The newly released game, which is available for a mere $0.99, takes the time-honored puzzle-game tradition of arranging things in groups of three and throws in some strategy and a surprisingly intense timed mode just to keep things interesting.

But the concept is simple, and once you start playing it, it’s really hard to put down.

Best List: Oppo HA-2 portable headphone amplifier and DAC

What kind of audiophile nerd do you have to be to shell out 300 clams to “improve” your iPhone audio? Well, that’s what it is going to cost you to convert your digital audio into analog goodness with style.

You can find cheaper options than the Oppo HA-2 portable headphone amplifier, but few as elegant and sleek.

My truck’s getting up in years and lacks many of the conveniences of a late-model vehicle. Forget about an in-dash touchscreen monitor — it doesn’t even have a USB port.

That means I’m stuck using a cigarette lighter adapter to charge my iPhone (which serves as my GPS on many trips). I’ve tried and enjoyed Gosin’s four-port charger, which is awesome for those rare times I’ve got a handful of devices to juice up, but that portly wonder juts out fairly far into the truck’s cabin. Like my truck itself, it is functional but slightly unsightly.

And then there’s the svelte Scosche reVolt dual car charger. Its disarming good looks have ruined me.

Best List: Screw sports sunglasses by Spy Optics

Choosing a pair of sports shades is always a balancing act of form versus function. Luckily, Spy Optics makes sunglasses for every face and every activity.

With its Screw series of shades, Spy found the sweet spot where you get what you need while sweating your ass off without looking like an ass when standing in line at the coffee shop.

Best List: Double Layered Knit Touchscreen Gloves by Mujjo

It’s almost winter, and if you reside in an area with a climate like mine, you know you’ll be carrying gloves with you no matter where you go. When you live someplace like Anchorage, Alaska, even a quick trip outside to the trash bin requires that you cover up.

And yet, we live in a touchscreen world. I have my iPhone with me all the time, and I use it to stay connected to my kids and family members as I move around the winter wonderland. Pulling off a glove every time I want to play a song or answer a text is time-consuming and sometimes dangerous.

If that’s something you worry about, Mujjo’s got you covered, quite literally, with these new double-layered touchscreen gloves.

Travel mug by Zojirushi

There’s unquestionable power in an object that does one thing and does it well. Consider the lowly travel mug — it’s a common commodity among the world’s coffee-swilling commuters, and yet the standard design lets us down repeatedly.

How does it fail us? It doesn’t keep our coffee hot for long. And, worse, it’s got a tendency to drip, spill and even spurt lukewarm java onto our clothes and car interiors. Many of my shirts bear depressing coffee stains, the marks of a road warrior using an inferior travel mug.

Best List: Magic Flute bike pump by Portland Design Works

The magic of the Magic Flute is its ability to do two things with equal aplomb.

On the one hand, it is a solidly built hand pump that lets you fill your bike tire the old-fashioned way. On the other, it is a handy CO2 cartridge adapter that lets you fill your tire quickly without the need for elbow grease.

There are so many iPhone apps for runners, it’s hard to decide which one to use. Should you go for a familiar brand like Nike, or a specialist like Runkeeper?

Ultimately, all running apps do pretty much the same thing: They use GPS to track how far and how fast you run. But when you take a closer look, their features and prices vary considerably. So I’ve done the leg work for you, to help you find the right running app faster.

It’s hard to find the best games out there. Every month, there’s a list as long as, well, a really long list of games on iOS that you might like but might actually suck.

Even the sheer volume of the vaunted Editor’s Choice picks can get overwhelming.

That’s why we’re here — to give you a leg up in finding just the right number of the very best new iOS games you can find on the App Store, without all the weeding you’d need to do just to find them on your own.

Here are our five favorite games from the month of November.

Best List: BlueSync RGD Bluetooth speaker by GoGroove

There are those of you who like to take risks. Face it, you love living on the edge, taking your precious electronics into dusty, dirty and even wet locations.

If your dream is to play tunes at high volume while you raft Class V rapids, rappel down a sheer cliff face or just take a shower, GoGroove has you covered.

The BlueSync RGD is a super-rugged, water-resistant Bluetooth speaker that will go with you anywhere and deal with almost all the dangers you can throw at it, all for a wallet-friendly price.

Best List: Reference R6i On-Ear Headphones by Klipsch

Sometimes you just need a solid, great-sounding set of wired headphones. They don’t need to charge up like my Bluetooth favorites do, nor do they require pairing (or repairing, like several models I’ve used).

Earbuds are great, too, but for extended listening sessions, I prefer on-ear headphones. They are less sound-isolating — I don’t need to hear my own breathing all the time.

Best List: Ribbn car charger by Tylt

Simple, elegant and fun, the Ribbn car charger is no-muss, no-fuss.

Offering up 4.8 amps, Tylt’s little Lightning charger plugs into a standard cigarette lighter socket and adds a bit of bright-blue bling to your car’s interior.

Shake hands with SnowCast. Make some small talk. It’s in your best interest, since this app is very quickly going to become one of your best friends as the winter season rapidly approaches. SnowCast very simply lets you know how much snow you’ll be getting over the next 48 hours at any given time.

Depending on where you are, that snowfall amount could be nothing. If you live in a mountainous area, that could be two feet. Maybe the amount is exactly 6.37 inches. Either way, SnowCast will keep you in the loop so you can decide whether to light the fire or go skiing.

Best List: Cool Bean snowboard by K2

If you hope to spend run after run in the sweet, deep powder on a single plank this winter, you’ll want a state-of-the-art companion.

K2 Snowboarding’s Cool Bean is just that: a directional, short and fat board with a swallowtail design that’s built for the freshies and surfing whatever the mountain throws at you.

Caseology is a fairly new smartphone case brand and the company was kind enough to send Cult of Mac four different cases from its iPhone 6s lineup to test out. With the vast majority of Caseology cases on Amazon receiving 4-star and 4 and a half-star reviews, I was eager to see if they lived up to the hype.

I got to use a navy blue and rose gold Savoy series case, navy blue and gold Wavelength series case, the silver and black Vault series case and the clear and rose gold Skyfall series case. In short, all of them ended up being four of my favorite cases to ever grace my iPhone.

Best List: Men’s Rudy Jersey by Kitsbow

“You look cute,” said my wife.

I have been pulling on bicycle kit in front of her for more years than I care to count, and she has rarely muttered these words. But Kitsbow’s Rudy Jersey is not like most other mountain bike kit — it is both functional and stylish.

Readdle’s highly praised iOS app PDF Expert has landed on the Mac. Shortly after its debut, it shot straight to the number one spot for paid apps on the Mac App Store. Apple’s own Preview app works fine for simply reading through PDF files or making tiny edits, but people who work with PDF files more frequently and need more power can benefit from giving the $19.99 PDF Expert a chance. Cult of Mac got the opportunity to do just that.

Everybody knows that the leader in the category of PDF editors and readers is Adobe with its Reader and Acrobat apps, but the latter costs $14.99 per month for a subscription or a staggering $449 for the full desktop software. As long as you don’t need to create PDFs, PDF Expert only asks for $20 out of your pocket and it’s jam-packed with all of the necessities and then some.