Product Reviews

Master & Dynamic MW60 Headphones – Bluetooth headphones that live up to the hype

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So, I may have a headphone problem the way some people have shoe problems.[footnote]though my wife swears I have a shoe problem, too…[/footnote] It’s not quite as bad as what I see with hard core audiophiles, but still, it’s bad.

Headphone addiction is kind of like they way people get hooked on adrenaline sports. You just need to get a taste, that first moment when a pair of headphones make you sit up and go, “whoa!”

For me, it first started with the first pair of headphones that really drove consistent bass (remember Sony’s Mega Bass? I totally got sucked into that hype). Eventually I grew up, realized that there was a lot more going on aside from the bass, even for EDM or whatever. The real a-ha moment came with a pair of Etymotic ER-4Ps that I still own to this day. They are my reference for great mid & treble response. Their only drawback is their bass response. It’s good, but not great, especially for tracks that really need solid bass response.

Still, I have so many “whoa” moments with these headphones. I’ll be listening to music I’ve listened to a hundred times with other headphones and I’ll just hear some detail that will pull me out of whatever I’m doing. “Whoa, what was that?” I’ll just stop & listen. It might just be the brush of fingers on a guitar, the bite of a bow on strings, or individual instruments that seem to merge together on other headphones.

The problem with the Etys is that they are IEMs – in ear monitors, or what everyone else calls earbuds. They go into the ear canal, creating a seal. The quality of the seal affects bass response. That adds a variable on top of the 4Ps flat response. So, while they feel exceptionally clear, sometimes I want to feel the sub-bass thump of an EDM track or the bass line of a hip hop track. They just showed me what was possible, but I knew there had to be better. Beyond that, IEMs aren’t as comfortable for long sessions, and they’re not interruption friendly (can’t just drop them to my neck). Plus, no mic or playback controls on these, either.

So when I returned to ESPN, knowing I’d be working in an office again [footnote]I really miss working at home sometimes… being able to crank a pair of desktop speakers is pretty nice.[/footnote], I started looking for over ear, closed headphones. I’ve used a pair of Sennheiser HD-280s (which I also love) at work since I moved to CT, through 4 different companies, but they are finally falling apart. Besides, they aren’t very portable nor do they have controls for play/pause/skip or a mic for calls. So, I began searching for a good desktop pair that also had phone controls and great, “whoa!” inducing sound.

One caveat – I’m not an audiophile, I don’t have golden ears, so while I aspire to own something truly crazy like the HiFiMan HE6’s[footnote]… which require a higher end amp to drive them, probably another $500-1000 on top of the price of the headphones…[/footnote], I’ve generally stayed around the $300 mark (or less). For me, headphones are less about an ideal sound and more about clarity. I want them to show me something new about my music while staying very close to what the artist heard in the studio.

I’ve gone through my share of headphones. I tried the Sennheiser Momentums, knowing I like Sennheiser’s sound, but returned them due to fit issues (ear cups were too small for me). I bought a pair of PSB-M4U1s based on reviews at Marco Arment’s site and The Wirecutter. Those were the pair I was using daily until recently.

Though the reviews were great, for my taste I found the PSB’s a tiny bit bass heavy and a little muddy in the mids and muted in the treble. Good all around sound, I like them, but I had very few “whoa!” moments. Maybe even zero… I can’t remember any right now. They’re also huge, at the outside edge of portable.

So I’ve been keeping an eye out for a new pair. This winter, I decided to get myself a gift, the Master & Dynamic MW60 Wireless headphones.

I found out about them from a bunch of press reviews around the launch, all of which were uniformly positive: The Next Web, Wired, Engadget, the Verge. Basically, a great sounding Bluetooth headphone with a unique design and a listening profile that matches my tastes.

The main criticism is their cost. These are expensive, luxury headphones but they live up to the luxury end of the deal. The materials are amazing. The construction is solid. The earcups are so soft and just plain pleasant to wear that I’m happy to wear them for long stretches.

They’re also Bluetooth headphones, with the tradeoffs that implies: requires charging, can have interference, and requires codec support on your playback device.

I’m not concerned about charging. The MW60 have a built-in Li-Ion battery, and charge using a micro-USB cable. I have yet to run down the battery, and I’ve gone a few days without charging at times. They claim 16 hours of use between charges. They can also fall back to corded use.

On the interference front, I’ve had nearly zero issues. The MW60s have much better range and reception than most Bluetooth headphones owing to their iPhone 4-like external antenna design. Like the iPhone 4, though, you can touch the antenna or brush it accidentally and cause the signal to drop out. I’ve had a few blips now and then, but not enough to get me to switch to corded use (a cord is included, can be used instead of BT). It is awesome, however, to not have to deal with the cord anymore and to still have really good sound.

To maintain sound quality over Bluetooth, the MW60s support aptX, so you have that available if your phone or other playback device supports it. iPhones do not support aptX, but not to fret. Apple chooses to send AAC audio over Bluetooth, which the MW60 supports (I confirmed w/ Master & Dynamic before ordering). Depending on who you ask, the quality is comparable to aptX.

As I mentioned, my sound preferences tend toward the more balanced side of things. The MW60 delivers on that, with a slightly bumped bass response. That’s pretty much perfect for me.

There are a few things I would improve. The button controls for play/skip/previous could use a rethink. The buttons have several functions overloaded in unique (to me) ways. The headphones have 3 buttons, but they don’t map to the typical 3 button remotes on other headphones. The Apple earbuds, Bose QC-25’s and my PSBs all use the main play/pause button as a skip/previous button: single tap play/pause, double tap skip, triple tap previous. The MW60 uses long presses on the volume buttons as skip/previous buttons. It introduces a delay in the skip process – basically, I want to go to the next track, but I have to wait. I also can’t skip quickly because each skip is a press, wait, press, wait, etc…

One other smaller gripe: I wish the included cord was a mic + remote cord. It’s nice to have the ability to go corded for long calls, especially in the car, and to know that I can move the mic closer if it’s particularly noisy.

These are all ultimately small issues. My only real regret is not getting the brown leather version. I ordered the black pair, as all my other headphones are black, but almost immediately regretted it, too late to change the order, though. I’ll live though. They’re still amazing to look at. Just not as striking as the brown leather.

I haven’t yet mentioned the price, but they’re expensive (MSRP is $549). There is a lot of competition in this price range. Other reviews have suggested the Bang & Olufsen BeoPlay H7, the B&W P5s, or the Sennheiser Momentum 2.0 as alternatives. Those are cheaper and many have a noise-canceling option at a similar price point. I haven’t tried any of those, to be honest. I’ll admit that this purchase was at least 50% driven by the design of the headphones[footnote]Though, I did research Master & Dynamic’s previous releases to make sure I would like the sound and they lived up to the reviews. The MW60 are based on the wired MH40, which have a longer review history. For example, check out Head-Fi’s reviews of them.[/footnote] I’m glad I took a chance on this.

Overall, I would recommend these if you like the look of the headphones, are OK with the tradeoffs around Bluetooth (which, IMHO are minimal with this or any high-end modern set), and are looking for a luxury item. There are better value picks out there, but this pair is gorgeous.

One year later with the Twelve South SurfacePad

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A year ago, I wrote that the Twelve South SurfacePad was my favorite iPhone case. After a year, I’m still very happy I bought the case. I love knowing that I can leave the house with just my phone knowing I have the two most important cards with it.[footnote]Interestingly, in the US, that’s my driver’s license and main credit card. In India, I just carry two credit cards since I don’t have a valid driver’s license.[/footnote] I thought it would be worth following up on two aspects a year into using this case based on the most common questions I saw in reviews while buying the case.

The biggest question was around one of the marquee features: can it be moved/removed without residue and while still remaining effective?

For me, I ran into a snag, but was able to get it off and onto a new iPhone successfully. The snag has to do with how the adhesive is made. It’s basically attached as a sheet to the insider of the leather. As I started pulling the case off the phone, the adhesive sheet started separating from the case and sticking to the phone. I just stopped when I noticed that, made sure I got the adhesive off, and then made sure to peel by pulling the adhesive & leather. The adhesive stayed intact as a sheet, still attached to the case, once I got the first edge pulled off. I had no problem after that. No residue on the old phone, too.

I then reattached it to the new phone. So far, it feels snug, I can dangle the phone by the case and the adhesive doesn’t seem to budge at all. I’m pretty happy.

The second question was around how the leather would age. Leather darkens and can stiffen as it ages, especially something like a phone case that’s always in my hand or in a pocket.

It has definitely darkened, and I’m debating whether to get a new case for this reason. I do like the darker red, but I’m going to get some leather cleaner and see if I can brighten it up.

The slots that hold the cards still hold the cards well, but they do slide around a tiny bit. I have one card that’s heavier, made of a faux metal material, that does want to slide out if I shake the case. That may seem contrived, but I do jog with the phone in my hand, which does worry me a little (I check to make sure the phone is right side up as I begin.

I’ve included a photo below that shows the case back when I bought it, the case now, and the back of the old phone. The phone photo was taken without any cleaning or other work – just the case removed. Click on it for a larger view.

Even with the wear, I’m really happy with the case.

Composite-SurfacePad-Shots-small

Goodbye Google Apps (GMail), Hello Fastmail (and MailRoute)

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I recently moved nearly all of my email off of Google’s services over to Fastmail, with MailRoute in front of it to block spam. [footnote]My @gmail.com address can’t be moved, and I’m keeping it. While I’m shifting most of that email to my main address, I’ll still use it for some things.[/footnote]

So far, I’m really happy. The services are relatively inexpensive, and the features compare well with Google, both in terms of space as well as functionality that I used. The best thing is that Fastmail offers a real, simple, plain vanilla IMAP implementation, which means it works a lot better with my iPhone and OS X’s Mail.app without weird label/folder/all mail strangeness.

MailRoute’s best feature is the quarantine summary email. Basically, each morning (or any interval you define), MailRoute sends an email listing mail it blocked that might be legit. Each email listed has a link to recover the mail and/or whitelist the sender. So, from there, I can quickly recover false positives without logging in and trolling through dozens of obvious spam emails.

I’m really happy with the setup, and with a lot of the surrounding email cleanup this prompted – I consolidated a few addresses and unsubscribed from a lot of newsletters/marketing crap I wasn’t reading anyway.

On the spam front, it’s just a tiny, tiny bit worse than what I had with Google. There are fewer false positives (legit email that ends up in the spam folder) and once in a while, a spam message makes it into the inbox. There are knobs and controls to twiddle with if that bothered me, but so far I’m not motivated to fix it – it’s just not enough of an inconvenience that it bothers me.

Whys and Wherefores

Both Fastmail & MailRoute are paid services, while my use of Google Apps for Domains/Business/Work/whatever-its-called-today was free. So, why did I do this?

I had a long, rambling explanation written talking about tracking and the ad market and evercookies and super cookies and why this bothered me, but I’ll summarize all of this with a few images. These are all the third party elements loaded when you visit a major online site like people.com:

people.com

Step down to a smaller publication that has to be more creative about ad networks or revenue, like, say the Norwich Bulletin:

norwich-bulletin

Tell me the business models and privacy policies of all of those third party sites. I’m in the industry and even I don’t recognize them all.

While most of the top 10-20 online sites are pretty good about restricting the partners they work with, ad retargeting and related ad models are getting more popular, all of which require tracking you as you wander around the web.

I just want to browse the Internet without a simple Google search or visit to an Amazon product page, for example, following me around the Internet for the next few days. So, that means not relying on services that need that data unless I have no choice. [footnote]I still can’t justify/rationalize quitting Facebook or Twitter. Moving email providers was easy. Yay, standards![/footnote]

Email is only one of the things I’m looking at removing. I’m testing out DuckDuckGo instead of Google Search.[footnote]so far, Google just seems better, especially for technical/programming searches. I haven’t switched over to DDG yet.[/footnote] I’m also contemplating writing/installing/tweaking a web analytics package to get rid of Google Analytics. That’s a bigger time commitment, though, so I may just need to find one with a better privacy stance.

Why Fastmail and MailRoute?

There are a lot of services out there and, if I’m being honest, I didn’t do a ton of research on this one. Just too busy these days. I heard about both of these services over the last few months from the Accidental Tech Podcast (MailRoute sponsored them a few times, I think), and co-host Marco Arment has blogged about them a few times.[footnote]That post, by the way, expresses a lot of what I like about this setup[/footnote]

So, I basically just ran with that recommendation after pricing it out and deciding that the $5-6/month was worth it. A little more privacy (plus the better/different features) for a little bit of money seems like a fair tradeoff.

Like I said, it’s been about a month and I’m very happy so far.

On the New MacBook

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I’ve been using the new MacBook as a personal travel laptop for the last month or so. I’ve been coding and writing blog posts with it and I wanted to share my experiences.

If you care about these sorts of things, I’m sure you’ve read countless reviews of the device. So I won’t try to cover everything. Instead, I’ll hit on a few specific things that matter to me.[footnote]Two reviews that I’ll highlight, in case you missed them: Marco Arment’s review (he hated it) and Rene Ritchie’s review.[/footnote]

This thing is liiiiight

So, I bought this sort of on a whim. I had to travel quite a bit recently, internationally and with a lot of luggage already[footnote]Ex-pat living note: when you travel back to your home country, it’s expected (neighbors will mock you otherwise) that you maximize your return luggage allowance with everyday luxuries that you can’t buy easily here in India. For example, my last trip I had a suitcase full of baby stuff from our attic, many boxes of mac & cheese, maple syrup, and Clif Bars.[/footnote]. I’m working on an app for myself, and using that to learn Swift. I couldn’t justify the weight of a second laptop in my carryon, so I couldn’t/didn’t want to bring my own MacBook Pro in addition to my work laptop.[footnote]Yes, I like carrying a separate laptop for personal things. I’m always hacking on personal apps and ideas, and I do all my writing on personal gear so I don’t cross the streams. Work is work. Personal is personal.

I recognize this is like the ultimate first world, self-inflicted problem.[/footnote]

For this scenario – a second, lightweight companion laptop – this thing is perfect. Far better than an iPad with a keyboard, because it runs OS X, and light enough that it’s like carrying a book. I hardly notice the extra weight. It’s just awesome.

Yes, the keyboard is weird (trackpad, too)

The keyboard is a polarizing feature. Reviewers seem to love it or hate it. I love it. It does take some getting used to, but once I did, I am able to type on it as fast as I can on my MacBook Pro. Switching between the two keyboards is my biggest problem. I make a few more mistakes when I first get on the Macbook, but it goes away quickly.

The bigger problem for me is that the keyboard layout is actually subtly different. Arrow keys and the Fn keys are the big ones for me. I still haven’t figured out the arrow keys, and still stumble around on those regularly. Thankfully I tend to code in things with Vi keybindings, so it doesn’t mess me up as often as it could.

For what it’s worth, I typed up the Mobile in India blog post on my MacBook (and this post, too).

The trackpad is similarly uncanny valley-ish, but more easily ignored. I sometimes tend to crash down on the trackpad to click it (trying to stop the screensaver from kicking in, for example), but since it doesn’t give, the haptic feedback illusion breaks since it doesn’t match the force with which I hit the trackpad.

Performance is merely OK

The Intel Core M processor used in the laptop is Intel’s attempt to build a tablet/hybrid processor. The processor also limits the amount of RAM. It’s OK for most things, but the laptop does struggle with anything that’s pushing a lot of data around. Overall, I see the beachball a lot more than I ever do on my MacBook Pro.[footnote]I also installed El Capitan on this, so performance has dropped a little as I’d expect with with a beta OS and working in a beta Xcode[/footnote]

That said, I run Xcode, I compile apps, and for the smaller applications I’m working on, it’s fine.

On the other hand, for writing blog posts, emails, and that sort of thing… this thing is PERFECT. I love it so much that I reach for it now when I want to sit down to write. The small screen minimizes the temptation to have distractions visible, and the retina screen makes reading type easy on the eyes.

Should you get it?

Depends. If you prioritize weight over performance, this is perfect. In any other scenario, the MacBook Air or the 13” MacBook Pro is a better choice.

For the developers, this cannot be a primary development laptop, but you can get away with Xcode or Atom or the like running with little trouble. Expect build times to be a lot longer than whatever you’re used to.

Bottom line: I love it, glad I took a chance on it.

OK, I’m convinced… Must have headphones for heavy travelers

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I can’t believe I’m recommending this, being a Bose-hater for most of my adult life, but the Bose QuietComfort 25 Headphones are now my favorite travel accessory. Overpriced, yes. Average-ish sound quality, sure. But the noise canceling is uncanny. Flip the switch and the silence is surprising. Unlike most other noise canceling headphones I’ve tried, these don’t give me a headache. I’ve used them on a few long haul flights at this point (17-20 hours in the air each trip) and they’re comfortable enough that I sleep with them on.

The Sony noise canceling headphones I used to own would give me a headache on a cross country flight. They were so annoying (and others I tried so poor at canceling noise), that I switched entirely to passive noise cancelation, using IEMs that just blocked sound.

That worked well enough, but on these long flights, enough noise gets through that my music needs to be loud enough that the music ends up giving me a headache after 5-6 hours in the air.

So, consider me a convert. If you have to fly as much as I have had to recently, these are worth the investment.

They work really well in the office, too. I’ll still use my PSB M4U 1 there, because the sound quality is better and I have an office with a door. 🙂

Moov: Fitness coaching, not just tracking

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41WGe2Sns+L._SL250_We’re flooded with fitness oriented wearable devices from the step/activity trackers like the Fitbit and Up to smartwatches like, of course, the Apple Watch. Some phones even have dedicated activity tracking chips.

The sad reality, though, is that most of devices are basically the same. They do step tracking. A few add some extra dimensions of motion capture, or have some additional functionality like sleep tracking, or online tools for food tracking. They’re all about quantifying your day and they’re mostly passive companions. You may get a short vibration when you hit some goals, but that’s kind of it.

There are exceptions, and one of them is Moov. A few years back, I preordered it based on a tweet from a friend and one feature I hadn’t seen before: it pairs with dedicated smartphone apps to provide live feedback during workouts.

So far, they have dedicated apps for Running/Walking, for Cardio Boxing, Swimming, and the trendy 7-minute workout (with Cycling on the way).

I’ve been using the Running app as I come back from my shin splints injury. As I run, the app provides feedback on my balance, stride frequency, and posture, making sure I’m landing without too much force or jarring of my leg. So far, the runs feel better on my legs when using the app, and it’s been good about keeping me from running to fast or too aggressively (it talks to you to stay within a certain stride frequency). It’s simple, but very useful.

I also tried the 7-minute workout app for the first time today. The workout is based on the workout the NY Times covered in The Scientific 7-minute workout. It’s not the exact same workout, instead using a simpler set of exercises with multiple reps. It did feel good this morning – the muscles I don’t workout regularly were slightly sore, and the app’s feedback and rep counter worked well.

Every time I use this device, I’m impressed. I’m surprised it doesn’t get more buzz, to be honest. It’s way more useful than any other fitness tracker I’ve tried. Totally recommended.

Practicing RC flying with a simulator

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One of my recent obsessions has been RC flying. So far, I’ve played with relatively cheap quadcopters and helicopters, but I’ve managed to crash every single one enough times to end up with a pile of damaged copters. So, I basically gave up on the hobby thinking I didn’t have the time (or budget) to really get into it. I felt like I either needed to spend to get an advanced quadcopter that auto-leveled and could correct for novice piloting, or really dedicate more time than I had to do the fly, crash, repair, charge cycle required to practice.

Recently, though, I discovered the world of foam board RC planes. These are planes built from cheap – like under $5 cheap – foam board using either custom plans or downloaded plans over the internet. Pre-made kits for the body of the planes can be found from places like Flite Test for under $40. These kits contain pre-cut or pre-scored foam board and the hardware required to connect to your electronics and servos. Flite Test has a great series of ‘swappable’ designs that make it easy to share batteries and electronics between several planes.

I found out about this via one of Flite Test’s videos featuring planes modeled after characters from Planes: Fire & Rescue, which happens to be my son’s current movie obsession. The models are amazing, and when they mentioned foam board, I had to see what it would take to build one with my son.

As I was trying to figure out if I could build one of these with my son, I discovered that I can now buy hardware that lets me practice RC flying using a flight simulator with a real RC transmitter. So, I could actually practice flying without all the crash, repair, charge steps in between flights.

I finally snuck in an hour to set this up at home and the results were awesome:

Aerofly RC 7 10th flight from sujal shah on Vimeo.

It’s hard to tell from the video, but I’m flying a simple RC plane in the simulator using a transmitter wirelessly. The sim is focused on RC flying, which is a little different than a typical flight simulator. The big difference is that the sim simulates operating the plane from the ground, not from inside the cockpit. This lets me practice the hardest aspect of this for me, which is maintaining an understanding of the spatial orientation of the plane and my controls. In other words, when the plane is flying toward me, I need to remember that pushing right on the stick will make the plane turn toward my left (because it’s facing me). That’s really hard for me, especially with my cheap quadcopters where identifying the “front” is tricky in flight.

That’s all the gear I needed to do this:

The connection process is pretty simple. Make sure the receiver is paired to your transmitter before you start connecting everything up. Then, the basic wiring pattern is the Single Line Converter (SLC) connects the receiver to the USB adapter on the computer side. Just connect channels 1-6 on the SLC (or as many channels as your equipment has) to the same channel output on the receiver using the included cables. The slot labeled S on the SLC should be connected to the USB adapter. Then just plug the USB adapter into the computer and fire up Aerofly. It will detect the USB connection and walk you through the setup process. It was pretty painless, though I recommend reading the instructions that come with the Ikarus stuff (for example, pay attention to connect + pin to + pin, – pin to – pin, etc. between the SLC and the receiver – the instructions contain the diagrams you need to make sure this is done right).

There were some gotchas in my particular setup: the Orange receiver doesn’t label the pins by channel number, but they turned out to be in order. Next, the Spektrum’s channel 6 isn’t in use by default. Aerofly likes all the channels to be calibrated, so I had to figure out how to enable that channel on my transmitter so I could finish the calibration without a warning message (it is a harmless error, but I was being picky).

Once that was done, I was able to get a plane up in the air, which I promptly crashed. I was thrilled, though, and am now just trying to do a simple racetrack around the airfield and then land. So far, I haven’t succeeded. 🙂

My favorite iPhone case

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For the last two years, I didn’t use a case for my iPhone. I really love the look of the 5 & 5S, and didn’t want anything to cover it up. Of course, by the end of the year, the screens had dozens of fine (and one or two not-so-fine) scratches. Really annoying.

So, for the iPhone 6, I decided I’d keep an eye out for a case that I could live with. A few weeks ago, I ran across an ad for the Twelve South SurfacePad (Amazon link). It looked perfect: a minimalist case that looks great and could help simplify my wallet (a separate mission I’m focused on before our move to India).

I bought and received the case last week directly from Twelve South. So far, it’s been great. I’ve included a few photos below. It’s easily the best case I’ve seen for the iPhone 6.

The case attaches to the back of the iPhone using a special adhesive that can be reattached multiple times. It took a few tries to get it attached squarely.1 It feels secure.

I love having my license and primary credit card with the phone. I can basically lock my wallet up when I’m traveling, and I rarely need to pull it out otherwise.

It also looks great, and it seems like the leather is breaking in as Twelve South indicates in the booklet they include with the case.

There are two drawbacks with this case. First, the cover can be awkward in two situations. When taking photos, the cover needs to dangle or get folded in the stand mode so that it doesn’t block the lens. When trying to use the phone one handed or as a phone, the case needs to be flipped around to the back (think of the smart cover on the iPad), which makes me slightly nervous about having the cards exposed. They are quite snug in their slots, but as the leather softens, I worry about the slots loosening up. Hopefully the cards will stay securely in their slots.

The second drawback has to do with combining a wallet with the phone. This weekend, for example, I had to use my card outside at a parking kiosk. It was raining, so getting to my primary credit card meant pulling my phone out and exposing it to the elements. Manageable, but not ideal.

Those are both tradeoffs I can live with, though. I really love this case. It looks gorgeous and functions well for me. Recommended.

I included some photos below of the case on my iPhone 6. (photos taken with a Google Nexus 6).

New iPhone case: SurfacePad for iPhone 6
Front of the SurfacePad
New iPhone case: SurfacePad for iPhone 6
Back of the SurfacePad
New iPhone case: SurfacePad for iPhone 6
Inside of the SurfacePad

  1. Truth be told, it’s still not perfectly square, which I only noticed when taking the pictures. OCD sufferers, take note. 🙂 ↩

Binoculars for looking at butterflies and insects? Who knew?

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41JLJGaFRrL._SL160_

A while ago, I was looking at (and tweeted about) some dude’s travel gear list and noticed a nice pair of binoculars in the pack, a pair of Pentax Papilio 8.5×21 binoculars. I saved it to my Amazon Wish List and this year Heidi bought them for me for my birthday. We’ve taken them on a short hike near our house and I’ve been messing with them here and there. I want to point out a couple of nice things about the set that might make them useful for some of you.

The cool thing about these binoculars is that they can focus at things about 2 feet away. While this may seem sort of silly for the traditional use for binoculars, the cool thing is that you can actually focus on things like bugs, butterflies, and flowers. They almost work like a magnifying glass but from a distance. If, like me, you’re curious about the little critters but are mildly afraid of getting too close, this is a great thing. I suspect kids would have a great time with these out in the woods just looking at all the little things in the woods.

The Papilios are decent at range. They’re not particularly powerful. At 8.5x you’ll find some cameras with more powerful zoom. Binoculars are nice, though, because you can look at things with a larger field of view and in better viewing conditions than a little screen on the back of a camera. I could see using them for casual bird watching or checking out animals from a distance. We’re not serious birders, but our primary use will be on hikes and longer rides.

I was also pleased by how light they were. On our walk, I hardly noticed I was carrying them. If you want a pair of binoculars, this is a good pair to take a look at. I really like them so far.

The Back-to-Basics Egg Muffin Toaster

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Back to Basics Egg and Muffin Toaster

I’ve been remiss in my blogging responsibilities and, for that, I apologize. It’s already January 5th and I haven’t mentioned the most unusual of my Christmas gifts this year. It’s the Back to Basics Egg and Muffin 2 slice Toaster and Egg Poacher. No, really!

What is this thing? Well, if you’ve ever had or seen an McDonald’s Egg McMuffin, you know exactly what this machine makes. It’s a combination toaster and egg maker that has a special cycle that poaches the egg and pops the toasted bread at exactly the same moment. Take your warm bread and your poached egg, add some cheese and/or meat of your choice and, voila!, home made breakfast sandwich. It also can hard boil eggs, so if you’re an egg fan, you can just use the egg part.

Heidi and I have been using egg substitute rather than real eggs or scrambling the egg before putting it in the machine since I’m not a fan of the runny yolk in a poached egg. Aside from that, I can add veggie sausage, different kinds of cheese, and better muffins than what McDonald’s might use. Choosing my own ingredients and making a warm breakfast sandwich so easily is worth it.

I found out about this machine from Fahrad Manjoo’s enthusiastic review on Salon. For $29.99, I was willing to give it a try. It works as well as he said, and the sandwiches are much tastier than anything I remember from McD’s. If you like Egg McMuffins, this is the machine for you.

Update: Forgot to mention another egg-related device. A buddy at work who stays fit eats eggs pretty much every day. I had him in our office Secret Santa so I got him the Krups Egg Express Egg Cooker as his gift. He loves it and says it does a great job making hard boiled eggs. So, in case you’re just into eggs without the bread (say, you’re an Atkins person), this is a pretty decent machine. Amazon shows it at $22.32, but I bought it from Amazon for $19.99. Not sure why the price went up.