Category: Reviews

Like many aspects of healthy living, understanding your blood pressure and the impact it has on your body is critical.  This is especially true for those with a genetic predisposition to heart disease and high blood pressure.  High blood pressure can have long term damaging impacts on your body that can include heart attack and stroke.  Monitoring your blood pressure and your pulse can be done at home with the Withing Blood Pressure Monitor.

The Withing Blood Pressure Monitor allows you to take your blood pressure at home, leveraging the Withings app on your Android or iOS phone to keep track of it on a daily or weekly basis.  While it is not as accurate as a medical office checking your blood pressure, it does serve as a solid tool to help you understand what you eat, drink, weight and exercise do to your blood pressure.  I’ve been using the Withings Blood Pressure Monitor for many months as part of keep track of my blood pressure as heart disease runs in my family.  It has become an valuable tool, giving me information that I can readily share with my doctor to discuss and make dietary or lifestyle changes.  Here is my review of this great medical tool.

Sleep is a critical part of any healthy lifestyle.  Getting the proper amount of restful sleep not only helps with your psychological wellness but also has other health benefits when it comes to general well being and fitness.  Sadly, most Americas struggle to get the proper amount of sleep each night or have poor quality of sleep.  Sleep as Android is an app that allows you to measure your sleep, the quality of that sleep, and integrate that data with apps like Google Fit.  By having the app running on your phone next to you as you sleep, it will track your sleep cycles, see trends and even record noises as you sleep to see if you are snoring or, worse, suffering from Sleep Apnea.

Sleep as Android, however, is so much more.  It can serve as your alarm clock, can play soothing sounds to help you relax and get to sleep and gently wake you up in the morning.  It is an all-in-one app for your sleeping.  I’ve been using the app since the beginning of 2017 as I am focusing on making sure I get the right amount of sleep each day.  It has been an eye opening app for me and has become a daily part of my life as I try to live a healthy – and rested – lifestyle.  Here’s my review.

When it comes to cases for your Nexus 6P, the options are pretty endless.  But when it comes to an elegant look with excellent protection for your phone, look no further than Noreve.  The French couture designer has been making handmade, premium cases and accessories for devices for years and their line up for the Nexus 6P doesn’t disappoint.  I’ve had the privilege of reviewing several of their cases over the years for a variety of devices and jumped at the change to review the Ambition grain leather folio case for my phone.  As you would expect for a luxury case, this one is fantastically constructed with great attention to detail and a solid fit around my phone.  Here is my review of this great case.

As a Formula One fan, the desire to play a reasonably realistic game based on real drivers, teams and circuits has been there for a long time.  The challenge has been the lack of such a game.  Sure the console games are fantastic from Codemasters but on mobile devices – both Android and iOS – there were F1-style games but nothing that would truly satisfy a fan of the sport.  That changed when Codemasters, the developer behind the console F1 games, released their mobile centric game, F1 2016.  While it doesn’t have the level of controls or customizations that the console level game has, F1 2016 is a remarkably well developed game with outstanding graphics, real teams, real drivers and, of course, real circuits.

I have been playing F1 2016 since the day it was released and I will admit, despite the hype, that I was skeptical that it would be a good game playing experience.  Happily, I’m wrong.  It is a great playing experience.  It’s not perfect but it is fun and challenging and that should keep F1 fans who want to turn a few laps at Monaco, Spa or Silverstone, happy and satisfied.

While it is handy to have a nightlight in a room, having one that serves a bit more than just soft light at night is a bonus.  That’s exactly what Choetech has aimed to do with their nightlight.  The Cheotech Nighlight certainly gives the soft, LED light that you would expect from a nightlight but it has the bonus of two USB ports so you can charge your devices while you sleep. Best of all, Choetech designed this nightlight for energy efficiency, safety and automatic turning on and off as natural light fills the room.

The company sent me one of these nightlights to review and having used it over the course of the past few weeks, I have to say I’m pretty impressed.  For sure it isn’t going to be the fastest charging ports you will find but given that you will be using them as you sleep, they get the job done.  Equally, the lighting provide is soft and relaxing.  All this for a under $15 makes it a great value.  Here’s my review.

We live in a world with big display phones and in Androidland, that is most certainly the case.  It is hard to find device under 5″ that have any sort of horsepower or performance.  The problem is, not everyone wants a 5.5″ device or even a 5.2″ device and that means you are meant making compromises in either screen size (going larger than you want) or performance.  I’ve been using the Sony Xperia X Compact over the course of the last few weeks and it is the one phone in the sub-5″ screen size market that doesn’t require that compromise.  It offers solid performance, good battery life and a camera that is truly impressive.  As I posted in my initial thoughts on the Xperia X Compact, it is a phone that should not be judged on it size when it comes to performance.  This phone has plenty of horsepower to do anything you need, including gaming and streaming, but does it in a small and comfortable package.  While the $499 price tag may put some off, if you are in the market for a smaller phone that doesn’t have a lot of compromises, the Xperia X Compact should be on your short list.

Here is my review.