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FT editor Roula Khalaf selects her favorite stories in this weekly newsletter.
the beam team
Given that flashlights the size of my little finger can illuminate the side of a house today, we shouldn’t be surprised by the new capabilities of compact portable flashlights. But the beam power of this new Fenix floodlight is truly amazing; It’s advertised as reaching over a kilometer (1260 m, to be precise), and while that obviously makes it an ideal flashlight for mountain rescue, we shouldn’t discount its ability to illuminate my local country park (a long, straight , old railway line). It’s normally unlit and best avoided after dark, so the ability to light it like a Belgian highway gives me a new, faster route home. All thanks to lasers.
The LEP (Laser Excited Phosphorus) in this unit is the same type of technology used in BMW’s Laserlight headlights. A blue laser is pointed at the base of the torch on a phosphor surface, generating white light. This is defocused and refocused through optical lenses onto the beam you see emerging. This creates exceptional long-range illumination, but does nothing to create scattered light to help you see what’s around you, including your feet. That’s why the flashlight combines LEP with more traditional LEDs to offer the best of both worlds: reflector, laser, or both simultaneously.
A single button lets you switch between these modes (with a long press to activate additional strobe and SOS options), while a rotary switch adjusts the beam intensity up and down. Bright light and long battery life are, as always, bitter enemies, but a small OLED screen gives you all the information you need to optimize your use; Each adjustment you make to the beam provides a new reading of the amount of time you have left. You can recharge the batteries via a USB-C port on the bottom of the flashlight, or alternatively, unscrew the light head and insert replacements (two 21,700 lithium-ion) if you’re on the go. Fénix warns us that “darkness has nowhere to hide”; I would say it certainly narrows down your options.
Shine then
Traditionally, the light that comes out of refrigerators at 2 in the morning is blinding. Realizing this, Gaggenau has begun to incorporate lighting into its appliances that goes beyond good taste and borders on theatrical. The Emotion Light that illuminates the interior of your 400 series dishwashers is one thing, but this refrigerator goes further: a warm white light fades gently when you open the door, settling at a level appropriate for the room. Your six-pack of yogurt has never looked so funny, but wait until you open any of the salad drawers: all the other lights in the refrigerator suddenly go out, focusing your attention entirely on your chosen cucumber. Slightly absurd, undeniably beautiful.
Do you see the night?
Infrared security cameras are adept at producing high-contrast grayscale images at night, but they don’t always tell the whole story. The cameras in this kit use large aperture lenses and sensors to capture images (visible and infrared), which are then algorithmically processed to produce images that look like they were taken during daylight hours. Seeing bright, clear video images of my house and garden in the winter darkness was a jaw-dropping moment. The two cameras communicate with a hub connected to your router and, from there, with the Eufy Security app on your smartphone, which offers a variety of options, including motion alerts (people, pets, vehicles), anti-theft detection and a link. even Apple HomeKit.
I have no ties…
The journey from “I can’t” to “I can” play guitar is long and painful. The Genie is a smart learning instrument that quickly gets you to a point where you can play chords and sing songs, certainly faster than you could with a battered acoustic. Inevitably some liberties are taken along the way; Its simplest mode gives you just seven preset chords (one per “fret”), but it’s still enough to play thousands of songs, through which the app guides you at the tempo you choose, with lights on the neck illuminating the path. There are no ties; Touch-sensitive areas let you tap and swipe to simulate plucking and strumming. The app allows musical adventurers to dive under the hood and get a little more creative.
Game on
This compact, wired, tenkeyless (i.e. no numpad, as gamers prefer) keyboard has the kind of smooth action and soft acoustics that make fans of mechanical keyboards cringe, but the icing on the cake is the granular. control you have over your lighting effects. Corsair’s iCUE software works to chromatically sync any of your RGB peripherals you may have, but this keyboard alone can be given multiple layers of effects in specific shades, with quick lighting zones assigned to certain keys (e.g. arrows, WASD). A very useful control dial can be assigned multiple functions and, naturally, a different color is assigned to each one.