The winning edge

Anurag Chakraborty

While gadget reviews in the past month seemed to be have been — headlined by Samsung — thanks to the stunning 65-inch SUHD TV and the 2 TB external storage SSD, the price tags for the two products took little time to yank us back to reality. Presenting our top five picks in gadgets for non-millionaires like us out there, this is Real Tech for this month:

Micromax Canvas Laptab LT666

For Rs 15,000, Micromax has thrown a mighty punch in the ring of convertible tablets we’ve been seeing lately. The device comes with the bells and whistles you’d expect something like this to have — an Intel Atom CPU clocked at 1.83 GHz, 2GB RAM and 32 GB flash storage. The 10.1-inch screen runs at 1280x800 and supports wi-fi b/g/n, bluetooth 4.0 and 3G data. Both the front and rear cameras have 2 megapixel sensors and the whole package is powered by a 7,700mAh battery. While the specs are modest and suffice only for everyday things like web surfing, word processing, it comes loaded with Windows 8.1 and will give a free upgrade to Windows 10 when it’s out. A free one-year subscription to Microsoft Office and 1TB of cloud storage is also thrown in. If you use it for the things it was meant to do, the product will not disappoint and it can actually be a good buy for first-time or casual PC users who are looking for more productivity than a usual tablet offers, at the same price.

Xolo Chromebook

As a concept, Chromebooks, or stripped down laptops that run on Google’s Chrome OS (not the browser, mind it!), are difficult to recommend in India. These devices pretty much feature only apps and storage that live on web and assume you’ll be online for most of your usage time, which is a rare case in India even today. But if you do know what you are getting into — which is lean, inexpensive machines that serve the purpose of web surfing, email, word processing and such all without the eventual performance issues with cheap Windows machines, then Chromebooks are great. And in such a case, the 11.6-inch Xolo Chromebook with a 1.88GHz quad core ARM processor, 2GB of RAM, 16GB of onboard storage and 10-hour battery life is a real slick pick for Rs 13,000! Beware of the mushy keyboard though!

Lenovo K3 Note

Even though there has been a ridiculous flood of cheap high-spec smartphones, few of them have performed as they should. And while much of that has been due to the Indian-Government-of-Operating-Systems that is android, which just swallows all RAM and processing power, you can throw at it like a bloated cuttlefish, it also has been due to cut-rate components, shoddy software customisations and compiling (a hallmark of pedestrian-grade phonemakers). With the K3 Note, Lenovo promises to be different than all of that. With a 1.7GHz octa-core processor, 2GB RAM, 16 GB storage, 13 MP camera, 3000 mAh battery and a 5.5-inch full HD screen, this phone yearns to yet another flash-sale whiz. And dare we say that going by the early reviews, this one’s a winner if you managed to get your hands on one.

ECS Liva X Mini PC

And while we seem to be on a roll with value-for-money PCs, this past month’s launch the ECS Liva X Mini PC also deserves mention. A tiny well-built box that can hide behind a TV or monitor to turn it into a mean everyday computer, it comes for just Rs 15,000 and sports an Intel Celeron processor, 2 GB RAM, 32 GB storage and a three-year warranty. If you’re having trouble finding the Raspberry Pi, this is a pretty great alternative.

Brainwavz Blu-100

Good bluetooth earphones are hard to come by. The Blu-100 from in-ear-monitor company Brainwavz is a decent buy for those looking for a relatively neutral soundstage (i.e. no  punchy bass) that is a cut above the terrible grade of earphones but certainly not in the upper echelons of audio gear. But then again it doesn’t burn a hole in your pocket either.