Tesmo Universe Book Review

EDITORS' RATING: 7/10

PROS

• It uses a 6-ring planner standard
• Frontside wireless charging
• Inside front cover flaps
• Backside USB-C, micro-USB, Lightning charging
• Nicely designed planner pages

CONS

• Relatively expensive
• Can't wirelessly charge and use planner at same time
• No blank pages included

The Tesmo Universe Book is one of the strangest devices I’ve ever reviewed here with SlashGear. It’s one of the strangest devices I’ve ever come in contact with, come to think of it. Not because it’s particularly strange in its abilities, but because of the unique nature in which it’s presented.

The Tesmo Universe Book has the ability to charge your smartphone. It’s also a planner with a bunch of pages of well-designed layouts that encourage the user to partake in the activity of planning. I like fun icons and I like quantifying things – this is the sort of paper-based impetus I need to get my everyday life in order. But this planner also charges your smartphone.

Why would you need your notebook to charge your smartphone? That’s not the first question I asked when I was first presented with this unique device. The first question I asked was: Why are they calling this binder of paper a… “device?” Because it’s a power bank, that’s why.

In the back cover of the Tesmo Universe Book is a set of cords and plugs. You’ll find one Lightning plug for your iPhone and/or iPad. You’ll find a micro-USB for your devices released several years ago. You’ll find a micro-USB-to-USB-C converter dongle here so you can charge all your new Android devices.

There’s also a big-side USB plug so that you’ll be able to re-charge the power pack within. The amount of power within (approximately 8000mAh) is indicated with a set of lights that turn on at the press of a hardware button. There’s also a stylus/pen loop here to keep your stylus or pen all looped-up and safe.

This device has a wireless charging pad (Qi standard) in its frontside. Likely you’ll place your wirelessly charged device there when you’re having a snack, or sitting in class, or maybe even while you’re on-the-go, with your device sitting neatly next to the Tesmo Universe Book in your travel bag. Supposing you’ve got a unique situation in which to use this product, it’s certainly here to make that possibility a reality.

The Tesmo Universe Book is exactly what it suggests it is, and it’s delivered in a package that’s nice to look at and use. The internal components work and the external materials are of fine quality. It’s been made according to the wills and wishes of the masses, as it was originally a Kickstarter project. Because of this, it’s been given a standard planner format – you can buy replacement sheets – A5 6-ring binder style.

If you need a Tesmo Universe Book, you’re going to have to pay for it. You’ll have to shell out $129 (that’s one-hundred and twenty-nine dang dollars) for the privilege of owning a Tesmo Universe Book. For that kind of money, you’re really going to need to appreciate the amount of detail this group of creators put into each page: the pressed lettering, the stitching, everything. Such is the life of an all-in-one product – sometimes cheaper in pieces, tempting but maybe-overpriced stuck together. You’ll find Tesmo over at Tesmo dot co right this minute.

Foobot Indoor Air Quality Monitor Review

EDITORS' RATING: 7/10

PROS

• Opens your eyes to air quality at home
• IFTTT integration
• Keeps a log of data and incidents

CONS

• No standalone display
• Arguable price tag

Houses these days are teeming with technology to help us live convenient, productive lives. Those range from simple (or sophisticated) home network routers to the smartphones we carry with us everywhere. Some more tech-savvy homeowners even have programmable lights, smart thermostats, and hi-tech locks. Very few of these devices, however, seem to be geared towards helping us live healthy lives. That’s where the Footbot comes in, bringing those technologies together to make sure you know whether you’re breathing clean and safe air or not.

You might mistake the Foobot as a smart speaker or an air freshner due to its white tower design and the bright LED light that runs around one of its sides. Given its true nature as a smart air monitor, those do come close to describing it. The design is nondescript and can easily serve as a part of your room decor, depending on your tastes. It’s USB-powered so you can even hook it up to your desktop if you want.

The Foobot’s most eye-catching detail, however, is its lighting. The LED color indicates the quality of the air it senses, ranging from blue for good, orange for worry, and red for danger. The light is meant to be bright enough to be easily visible during the day but it could be distracting at night, especially in the bedroom. Fortunately, the accompanying app lets you tone that down a little or even turn if on or off on a schedule.

Of course, the Foobot is more than just a pretty face. It has to be, given its price tag. It’s real talent is in how well it analyzes the air around you and the dangers that invisible particles might cause. The Foobot measures four things. Humidity and Temperature, admittedly, are things you can already get from some smart thermostats. The real difference is in measuring the Volatile Organic Compounds (VOCs) like methane, ammonia, and iso-butane in cleaning sprays and old furniture, and the Particulate Matters like dust and fumes that could cause allergies and asthma.

The Foobot is easy to set up and connect to your Wi-Fi network but it takes around 6 days for it learn the area’s “normal” air and start sending you notifications for changes in air quality. When it does start to work, it can be pretty sensitive, alerting you to the slightest change, like when you’re cooking or cleaning. And there lies one of the Foobot’s few flaws: you won’t really know anything until you look at your phone.

The monitor’s bright LED light is simply an at-a-glance indicator of air quality but whether you’re curious about the current state of the air or you have been alerted to a spike in harmful particles, you won’t have a clue. It would have been nice if Foobot included even a small LCD screen to give you the stats. As it stands, you’ll have to fish out your smartphone to know what’s up.

That said, there’s plenty to see and do in that app. The Foobot app goes into detail with each of the values that the monitor measures, including carbon dioxide (which is simply interpolated rather than measured directly). Better yet, it even keeps a history of those readings to help jog your memory when the time comes. The app will also ask you to tag spikes so that you will remember you were simply cooking when that data was recorded.

By itself, that’s pretty much all that Foobot does. It analyzes the air around it and alerts you to any problems it detects. Yes, it can give you tips on how to alleviate the situation but you still end up doing all the work. That is unless you already have a smart home. One thing that sets Foobot apart from the competition is its integration with other connected products. If you have an Amazon Echo, you can ask Alexa to tell you what the current air condition is and the assistant will also give you tips on how to make it better. If you have a Nest thermostat that’s connected to a heating, ventilation, and air conditioning system (HVAC), the two can work together to set the right temperature and conditions automatically.

And if that weren’t enough, Foobot also has support for IFTTT, which opens up a whole new world of home automation. You can turn smart humidifiers on or off as needed, create your own spreadsheet log of data and incidents, or turn all lights in the house to red when the air quality is at its worst. You’re pretty much just limited to the smart appliances you have and whether they’re supported on IFTTT as well.

At $199 on Amazon, the Foobot Indoor Air Quality Monitor is pretty much on par with its rivals in terms of price. That, however, raises the question of whether such products do warrant that cost. While some would say you can’t put a price tag on health, you can definitely put a price tag on IoT devices like this. That said, with Nest, Echo, and IFTTT support, the Foobot sets itself apart from the competition and may at least make it worth the expense.

PUBG MOBILE REVIEW

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Controls are obviously an issue, but it's amazing to see this full-fledged battle royale on mobile.

BY DAVID JAGNEAUX If you’d said a month ago that PUBG Mobile would run better than PUBG on Xbox, and that it’d be free, you’d have gotten a lot of strange looks. Yet here we are, and mobile gaming’s future has never looked brighter. It’s absolutely remarkable that it runs so well and manages to fit all of PUBG’s features onto tiny touch-screen displays.

Make no mistake: this is the real PUBG experience. One hundred people hunched over their Android or iOS phones and tablets fly over a deserted island and skydive down from a plane to loot abandoned buildings, gather up resources, and duke it out until there’s only one person left standing. The first time you drop onto a map and see all of the island of Erangel sprawled out before you in real-time, on your phone, is a surreal experience.

We Got Our First PUBG Chicken Dinner on Mobile!

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Autoplay setting: On

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While the mobile version only has the original map available, it’s otherwise about as close to the PC iteration as could be hoped for in terms of performance. In fact, it’s somehow significantly better than the Xbox version from a technical standpoint. Textures are nicer, the framerate is more stable, and it hasn’t crashed. While it may not have crossplay support with PC and console (like Fortnite Battle Royale Mobile), that just means that there’s no danger of opting into a lopsided match against people playing with more accurate controls. However, it would have been nice to at least carry over account customization items at least.

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Overall it feels a bit better than other mobile shooters.

But of course, this is a multiplayer shooter, and this kind of game doesn’t have a great track record with touchscreen controls. Overall it feels a bit better than other mobile shooters, but still not that great. You can easily move around using the joystick, rotating the camera by dragging your right thumb across the screen, and there are on-screen buttons for things like opening your backpack, crouching, going prone, and even jumping. When a gun’s equipped, buttons pop up for aiming down the sights or through the scope, and you can fire with either thumb. But doing them all at the same time is pretty cumbersome. After spotting someone, you typically have a second or two to line up your shot, which is tough, and if you miss you’ll need to swipe your thumb to rotate and line up the shot again, making it hard to quickly line up shots.
After playing a few matches I started to get used to the controls, even if they’re nowhere near as sharp. But PUBG Mobile isn’t supposed to be better than the other versions, it just feels like a nice way to play the same game anywhere at any time.
For example, you shoot by tapping on-screen buttons, but those buttons just so happen to be in a spot where you’ll often drag your thumb across. When that happens you’ll accidentally fire off shots, which not only wastes precious bullets but alerts enemies to your position. It’s a little cumbersome to loot non-essential items and swap healing items, too.
I found that I played PUBG Mobile very differently from how I play on PC and console. On the tied-down systems, it’s beneficial to take your time slowly moving across the map, hiding behind trees and creeping through houses to avoid detection. But on mobile, I busted into areas guns blazing with a much greater degree of confidence in my abilities. It appears as though the vast majority of players struggle to aim right now, though it’s unclear if that’s a general lack of skill or because some of them are actually easy-to-kill bots in the lower levels of matchmaking.

PUBG Graphics Comparison: iOS Mobile vs. PC

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Autoplay setting: On

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Developer Tencent took a few liberties to compensate for the controls by automating some simple tasks. When you walk over a gun, for instance, your character automatically equips, loads, and switches the gun to autofire. If you walk over ammo for a gun you have, you’ll pick it up right away. The same goes for health items, unequipped attachments, and armor. And there’s even a visual indicator on the map and sometimes minimap showing which direction shots are coming from, in case you’re playing without good headphones. There’s a line on the main map showing the plane’s path at the start of matches, too.

Since this is a mobile game, I initially went into it expecting some minor pay-to-win elements or gratuitous ad placement that would be hard to look past. But even almost a week after launch, you can’t buy any items that give you an advantage and I don’t recall seeing many ads at all.
The mobile version has a few more progression mechanics in place that bring it up to speed with most other mobile games, such as refreshing Seasons to work toward timed rewards, you get daily login bonuses, there are objective-based event rewards, and you can connect your profile to Facebook to find friends quickly.
More than anything else, the portability and accessibility of PUBG Mobile more than make up for its limitations. Being able to pull your phone out of your pocket and drop into the tense battle at any time is a remarkable technical achievement.

The Verdict

PUBG Mobile is a remarkable technical achievement and deserves commendation for being a fully playable, feature-packed, and stable iteration of a demanding PC and console game. Touchscreen controls can be finicky and it will never be as accurate as playing with a mouse or gamepad on a PC or console, but the portability and accessibility of PUBG Mobile more than make up for it.