Tech Blog

There are two certainties with every Dyson vacuum: it will be beautiful, and it will suck (and that's a good thing).

The latest home appliance combination of technology and esthetics adds another title to its resume: it defies physics.

It's time for another annual look back at the gear I acquired (and retired) in 2011.  

An iPhone 4 (not the S), a new vacuum and dishwasher are not the sort of things you'd expect to see in a gadget reviewer's arsenal, but they made it into mine.

Sure I got a new Macbook Pro and subscribed to all the fun things you can get in the cloud, but even when it came to getting the Steve Jobs biography, I went analog.

For Christmas this year, my wife and I agreed to buy each other a Bosch dishwasher.  

While we thought we'd snagged a great deal, you can do us even better as a couple of Bosch models are on sale for Boxing Day.

We LOVE our new dishwasher, it's a luxury treat that has paid off in spades.

Keurig's Single Serve Coffee Makers address the biggest problems of traditional drip coffee makers. We often tend to brew too much, they require replaceable baskets for the coffee grounds and they need to be cleaned after each brew and consumers usually buy and consume large quantities of the same kind of coffee.

Well, with the Keurig KUB60 Special Edition system, available from Future Shop this is no longer the case.

All photos by Gadjo C. Sevilla

The idea that we can employ robotic devices to take care of necessary but time consuming household chores is quite attractive. Our lives are busy enough as they are, who really wants to take a few hours to scrub floors.

Much like the Roomba robotic vacuum cleaner, the Mint Plus is a two-trick device. It cleans dry and cleans wet. We test how well it does these tasks.

I'll never understand how waiting 10 minutes in line at a busy Starbucks counter or Tim Horton's drive thru in the morning rush to work is more convenient than taking 3 minutes and brewing a perfect cup at home.

Don't let women tell you they don't want appliances as gifts. They do - if it's the right one.

It’s clear that I’m a fan of Dyson’s Air Multiplier Fan, not because it’s pricey, but because it’s the best at what it does. I took the time earlier this year to compare it to fans I’ve used and trusted for years, and I’m pleased to say that it absolutely justified the price for me.

For this holiday season Dyson has turned their attention to a truly Canadian niche: the space heater. It doesn’t matter if you’re in the frigid climes of Inuvik, the blanketed Prairies, the blustery East coast, or the truly moist winters of the Lower Mainland, you’ve probably got a space heater tucked away in your home to help stave off colder nights, and to save energy when you don’t want to get your central heating roaring away to warm your whole home.

The result? The Dyson Hot. It’s simply named, beautifully designed, and even goes as far as to improve on some of the Air Multiplier’s best features.

It’s that time of year again: even those who have AC find themselves heading to storage closets to extract dusty fans, only to find that these noisy old devices are stuck firmly in the 20th century, and that they don’t do a very good job of the one thing they’re meant to do: help cool you off.

That’s where Dyson’s Air Multiplier comes in. Like Dyson’s other products, it’s superbly engineered. Like Dyson’s other products, it’s pretty darned pricey. So why on Earth would you want one? Because, like Dyson’s other products, it’s the very best on the market at what it does.

Happy Earth Day!

Upgrading to Energy Star® appliances can go a long way to saving on your energy bill at home. Your new washer will use as much as 50 per cent less energy than standard machines. But adopting a few new laundry trips and tricks will help you do even more to protect your family’s health, and the planet’s.

There is at this time, in my mind, one vacuum manufacturer to rule them all: Dyson. I’ve owned competing brands (they found their way to (competitor) eventually) in both upright and handheld. I put up with the borderline horrendous suction of a central vac for years. I put up with dust and dirt that just didn’t want to come out of carpets for a very long time.

That ended when I bought the DC23 Stowaway. I was sold the first time I used it; I put it through the “Dyson test” - vacuuming my floor with my old vacuum and then going back at it with the Dyson. The DC23 and every Dyson model I’ve tested since (the DC18, the DC25, and the DC26–the Dyson City) have all performed the same way: the level of gross that the pull out of apparently clean surfaces is astounding.

There’s only one problem: sometimes a small mess isn’t enough to warrant hauling the big guns out, even when those guns are as compact as the DC26 Dyson City. I’ve always wanted a Dyson handheld, but the short battery life just put me off. Even if a job was a short one, I felt too constricted by the time limit imposed by them. What I wanted was a Dyson handheld vacuum that would be good for upwards of ten minutes of continuous use (I’ve only got 1100 square feet to clean, max) with awesome suction. Oh, and it would be great if it had an extended wand for doing blinds and drapes, and a powerhead so I could clean the floor quickly. It’ll never happen, right?

You can imagine my glee (yes, I said glee. I like to clean, alright. It’s something I get from my mother. It’s either vacuuming regularly or therapy. Deal with it.) when I found the Dyson Digital Slim DC35. I’m actually a little giddy writing about it. It’s the perfect companion to my DC23 for me. Seriously, they’re like Batman and Robin.

Once again in the Central Hall of CES 2011, Korean electronics giant LG had a massive display booth, welcoming guests with models dishing out passive 3D glasses to passerbys as if you were walking into the world's largest cineplex theatre. Except this space featured bright lit 3DTVs and a variety of LG's latest innovations, including a considerable amount of floorspace dedicated to appliances.

There’s been a push to make appliances smarter over the past decade. It started with the $15,000 fridge that had an LCD TV built in, and moved on to a myriad of new shapes and sizes, in-door cooling, freshenators, and other fascinating tech that was much more useful. Probably the best thing to happen to appliances is the agreement that the industry would, if it could be helped, avoid acknowledging that the could “bisque” ever existed. 

In the last three years the efforts of major manufacturers have reached a fever pitch. As relative newcomers like LG and Samsung try to carve out a share of the market for themselves they’ve been directing their initiatives towards innovation; by offering new and impressive technology in the kitchen they hope to break customers out of a ten-year cycle of replacing appliances while simultaneously getting them to consider their non-traditional brands. 

One of the neatest things about owning a digital device is discovering new ways to use it. Got a spare 10 minutes? Look for a new app. Great way to kill time

For example, when I bought my iPad Touch, I started monitoring websites and twitter feeds such as 148apps and appadvice.com.