The Ifi GO Pod Earphones Bundle
Earphones that place studio-quality sound within reach of the Everyman
Though the Beatles’ hometown, Liverpool, has many fine attributes, it’s still a relatively sleepy, provincial, out-of-the-way city. But it is positively metropolitan compared with a staid seaside resort town a short way up the coast. Southport is a place of faded glory, where Liverpudlians’ wealthy older relatives retire to play golf, make polite conversation, and gently grumble about the demise of everything.
So a red-hot technology hub Southport most certainly isn’t. Yet it’s here, in a large Victorian house surrounded by the stereotypical elements of pleasant English life—nursing homes, tennis and bowling clubs—that some of the world’s most eccentric and technically accomplished audio tech is designed.
In 12 years and some 50 product launches, iFi (pronounced “eye-fi”) has become a globally renowned name for high-end audio products, many featuring quite startling industrial design. One of your columnist’s all-time favorite products, indeed, is their 2019 Aurora one-box stereo, five years old now but still available and still sounding beyond superb.
The $1,499 iFi Aurora, built from aluminum and bamboo, was designed by a Frenchman working in China, Julien Haziza, who says his inspiration for the product came from Japanese industrial designers and architects, and from the Omotesando and Harajuku districts of Tokyo. The electronics, featuring a Russian 6N3P vacuum tube alongside more modern components, were engineered by an eccentric German, Thorsten Loesch, who says he used techniques he learned working in Communist-era East Germany. Such a febrile mix of global influences fusing in an old house in sedate Southport is almost too much to take in.
The latest hi-fi product to be hatched up there is a pair of in-ear headphones like no other. The iFi Go Pods in themselves are not so much headphones as they are a pair of digital-analog converter/amplifier combos worn on loops behind each ear like hearing aids. The Go Pods in turn plug seamlessly into in-ear monitors (I.E.M.’s), the kind of snug-fitting, leakproof, ultra-hi-fi earphones used by extreme audio nuts and onstage performers and almost nobody else.
Because normal humans don’t possess I.E.M.’s, it offers the Go Pods with a small range of selected models. The Go Pods AIR MAIL tried came with $1,100 Mach 60 I.E.M.’s by a leading U.S. maker, Westone Audio, but retailers such as HeadAmp, in Charlottesville, Virginia, make their own, less scorchingly expensive combinations, which we’re sure will also sound amazing. Note that if you have your own I.E.M.’s, the Go Pods alone cost $399.
So how good are Go Pods? We scarcely have the words. Put it this way: There’s loud, and then there’s iFi Go Pods loud. These can blow your head off while retaining impeccable audio quality, and they sound equally magnificent with the volume turned halfway down. It’s a production putting them on, but once you’re used to them, it’s possible that no other headphones will ever satisfy you.
The Nikon Z f Mirrorless Camera
A digital camera that’s every bit as accessible as its 35-mm. predecessor
In the second Landing Gear column, about two and a half years ago, we reviewed a Nikon camera, the Z fc, which was a digital reimagining of the wonderful 35-mm. Nikon FM and its successor, the FM2, used by some of the world’s finest press photographers from 1977 until the early 21st century. The Z fc echoed the FM’s retro looks, but modern materials meant it could be lighter and smaller, if slightly flimsier.
The Z fc, which retails for around $1,000, remains a lovely camera and has been popular. So, continuing the theme, Nikon has rebirthed an FM that’s larger, heavier, and tougher than the original. Welcome the Nikon Z f, which retails for nearly $2,000. Next to the original FM2, which your columnist owns and still loves to shoot pricey 35-mm. film with, the Z f looks like something from the past—big and complicated, with dials and controls everywhere you look.
But it’s the manual knobs and buttons that make the Z f such a joy to use. Those big, clear, clickable controls, such a relief from the tyranny of multiple digital menus, are ergonomically perfect. There’s a simple, well-placed lever, to toggle from color to black-and-white to video, and dials, to add and subtract exposure stops, change the camera’s shooting mode, and adjust the I.S.O.
We tried the Z f with a Nikkor Z dx 12–28-mm. f3.5, which is a thrilling wide-angle lens with a wonderful zoom range but which makes the camera even bigger. The Nikkor Z 40-mm. f/2, which Nikon suggests as a first lens, is a lot more compact, though less exciting.
The Z f is a full-frame camera, which ensures the highest possible picture quality. It also has prodigious 4K-video capability. But it’s the simple switch-to-monochrome mode that will be the winning feature for many. People forget the creative boost you can get from shooting black-and-white with a digital camera, and it’s a relief not to have to trawl through menus to get there.
Minuendo Earplugs
Finally, noise-canceling capabilities for the analog-inclined
If you’re a musician, love live concerts, or are just a frequent flier who gets ground down by airplane-engine noise, you’ll appreciate that standard earplugs are too all-or-nothing to be satisfactory. Often you want to block out just a certain amount of the sound, and that’s not possible with basic foam slugs, which muffle everything.
These adjustable—but non-electronic—earplugs are designed and made in Norway specifically for performers. Each Minuendo earpiece has a movable lever with which you can adjust the sound level to what’s comfortable.
If you try them at home or in the office, your first impression of Minuendo may be that the build quality is a little cheap, and the lever doesn’t change the sound level noticeably. But on a couple of recent flights, they proved highly effective, and the adjustment, although touchy, is real.
A pair of the earplugs is expensive for what they appear to be, but they are quite complex—and fulfill their purpose. And the price could easily be justified by one flight next to a screaming child.
The Apple Watch Ultra 2
A more rugged version of the ubiquitous smartwatch
Your columnist had the extraordinary experience of visiting Albania in the 1980s, when it was Europe’s version of North Korea but possibly even more authoritarian.
At the time, the state had for some unfathomable reason declared that the only acceptable legwear for adult men was brown, flared trousers—literally every man in the country wore the same pants.
In a less insane way, and through no fault of Apple, their products have taken on the same quality of state-imposed uniformity. Everyone now seems to have the same iPhone, AirPods, and, lately, Apple Watch.
A smartwatch with scores of functions beyond telling the time—from helping you navigate to detecting atrial fibrillation to e-mailing—is clearly desirable. Otherwise, people wouldn’t be buying them by the millions. And while there are excellent Android-based smartwatches, they hardly compare.
So is there an Apple alternative to the Apple Watch? Well, actually, yes. It’s the Apple Watch Ultra 2. It’s more expensive, larger, and designed for outdoors enthusiasts.
The Ultra 2 is the S.U.V. of smartwatches, and most people will probably never use all its rugged capabilities. But it’s still more covetable than the already desirable standard Apple Watch.
What are the Ultra 2’s benefits? Aside from being extremely handsome, it has an unbelievable battery life—it can hold a charge for around two to three days, which exceeds Apple’s own claim; the screen is bigger and brighter, making it readable even in direct sunlight; there’s an action button on the left, which can be programmed to any function (the flashlight is a crowd favorite); and the sound from the Ultra is also better and clearer than from the regular Watch.
But above all, it looks different from everyone else’s smartwatch without being a less desirable Android, and simultaneously hints subtly that you might be a mountaineer, even when you’re just a couch-bound sluggard.
Based in London and New York, AIR MAIL’s tech columnist, Jonathan Margolis, spent more than two decades as a technology writer for the Financial Times. He is also the author of A Brief History of Tomorrow, a book on the history of futurology