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Showing posts with the label philip.berne@futurenet.com (Philip Berne)

After a month with Cricut Maker 4 I’ve pushed my crafting past its limit, and past the limit of the machine

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Cricut Maker 4 review: One-minute review Cricut Maker 4 is an excellent addition to the impressive lineup of crafting machines from Cricut. If you want to craft at home and produce professional-level results, the Maker 4 can help you create decorations, gifts, jewelry, clothing, keepsakes, and much more. It isn’t the easiest tool to use – Maker 4 will help your crafting reach new heights, but it won’t make things for you – yet with some patience and practice, the results can be truly astonishing. Cricut Maker 4 is the most capable Cricut machine you can buy. There is a larger, commercial-strength Cricut Venture machine, but the Maker 4 can cut a wider variety of materials. Every Cricut cutting machine can cut paper, cardstock, vinyl, and similar materials, but only the Cricut Maker series can cut thick materials like wood and leather. It’s strong enough to engrave aluminum sheets, but delicate enough to cut fine details into felt. You don’t need to upgrade to the new Cricut Maker 4...

Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus review – the sweet spot for the Galaxy family

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The Samsung Galaxy S25 Plus is a strange middle child. It's not just a bigger Galaxy S25, because it shares some technology with the Galaxy S25 Ultra. Sadly, not the best Ultra tech, like the 200MP camera sensor, the 5x zoom camera lens, or the titanium frame, let alone the S Pen. Still, the Galaxy S25 Plus isn't too hard to recommend. The Qualcomm Snapdragon 8 Elite for Galaxy chipset is the same in every Samsung Galaxy S25 phone, and that's a significant upgrade no matter what older phone you're using right now. It's faster than last year's Snapdragon, and if your phone is a couple of years old or more, you're going to be in for a real treat. The Galaxy S25 Plus also uses a higher-resolution display than the smaller Galaxy S25. With a nearly-4K resolution, Samsung has endowed the Galaxy S25 Plus and S25 Ultra with its new ProScaler technology. It says this tech is borrowed from the Samsung TV group, and it uses AI to upscale lower-resolution content to ...

OnePlus 13 review: I'm dumbfounded, I can't find anything wrong with this phone

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OnePlus 13: Two-minute review The OnePlus 13 is extravagant and restrained. It’s a beautiful phone, sure, but OnePlus has made beautiful phones before. The OnePlus 13 is trustworthy. It’s durable, maybe the most durable phone I’ve tested that wasn’t made with military standards in mind. It’s also refined, with a look that is equally pretty and smart. It will also get four years of Android updates from OnePlus, which is longer than you’ll probably own this phone. I highly recommend the OnePlus 13, and my biggest concern is that people won’t know what the hell phone I’m talking about. OnePlus fans know the company very well; other folks… not so much. As I reviewed the OnePlus 13, I met more people than ever asking me what’s that gorgeous phone I’m using (sorry, embargo). I’d tell them it’s the new OnePlus, then I had to spell the name of the company because they’d never heard of it. OnePlus is a company you need to know about if you’re in the market for a premium phone. (Image...