Wireless Hunt: Probably Over – Sony WI-1000X

Well that sure didn’t take very long. As discussed previously in my HD1 Free post, the Pixel 3 is USB-C only. The headphone jack is dead, long live the headphone jack! I was battered and beaten by the Senn’s being absolute hot garbage, but I soldiered on. My hallmarks of (mostly) affordable audio quality – Etymotic – set a very high bar, and for me are an absolutely perfect sound signature. The only closest ‘phones I’ve found is in the full size AKG K701s and oddly enough the Apple dual driver IEMs (Long live you, you affordable, glorious bastards), but then again I haven’t looked extremely hard. I love clarity, I love a prominent midrange, I love what most would call “anemic” bass. For me, detail is king. I want to be wowed by accuracy, speed, and finesse, not by bass so hard it loosens my molars and obliterates the mids and highs. But, then there’s the Sony WI-1000X, and maybe, just maybe, I can find a middle ground.

WI-1000X

The WI-1000X are a neckband style Bluetooth IEM with a very premium build of metal and rubber covered plastic with a padded leather neckband weighing in at a featherlight 70-ish grams. They feature a 10-hour battery life and active noise cancellation on the pair of hybrid drivers. High tech!

Initial impressions were good! I got mine used (Only about a week, practically new!) at less than half retail cost, and they arrived without any retail packaging, but did sport the charging cable, headphone cable, carrying case, and full arsenal of both silicone and triple comfort tips. Out of the bag, I got a pretty much perfect fit with just the included large tips. Isolation was mediocre as expected with a shallow fit canal phone, but I knew this going in. I immediately threw on noise cancellation, and outside of a faint buzzing noise, outside noise was cut to the point of about my Etymotics.

Accessories! Travel bag, MicroUSB to headphone, airplane adapter, microUSB cable, and a full arsenal of tips.

Sound quality wise, I will say they’re not Etymotic, but they’re good. Streaming Sony’s LDAC codec off my Pixel 3 gave me what I could call a pretty full, enthusiastic, yet smooth sound. I do still find the low end just a bit sloppy, but then again, I’m not used to having a dynamic driver in my ear. The hybrid design leads to a pretty wicked experience though, with all the boom of a dynamic driver and the articulation and speed of a balanced armature. A-Ha’s “Take on me” has the synth perfectly placed and articulated over the bass line, with the vocals not getting lost in the mix. Kygo’s “Here for you” sees Ella’s vocals smooth as ever, and nothing ever really gets lost or jumbled in the mids of “Mr Brightside” by The Killers. They trade the Etymotic’s intimacy for an improved soundstage, as seen in Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines”, which I find plays well on soundstage in general. They’re warmer, smoother, and less precise than Etymotic, but they’re enjoyable!

There’re a few things I’m a bit annoyed by, but they’re minor at most and not at all make or break for these things.   

• The stock tips fit great, but don’t isolate well. I was able to work around this a bit by placing some comply foam between the tube and hood on the large hybrid tips, which both improved comfort and fit, and increased isolation. 
• The IEMs also take well to EQ, however the Sony app on Android limits you to the SBC codec when using the EQ in the app – Too bad. 
• When powering the IEMs on, they default to noise cancelling as well. I notice a bit of a change in sound with noise cancelling, and it’s only two taps on the right neck button to change it, but it would be nice if it remembered your last setting. 
• The charge port on them is MicroUSB and you can’t charge and listen at the same time. 
• They’re on Bluetooth 4.1 with no multipoint connection. It’d be nice to be able to switch quickly between say, my Surface Pro and my Pixel 3, but you need to manually disconnect from the last device before connecting to another.

Overall these are a tech nerd’s dream Bluetooth IEMs and I’m pretty darn happy with them. They’re packed with sweet features like ambient passthrough, they noise cancel, they sound great, have better battery life than true wireless, and they’re built well. I’m happy with these, and if I had a wish list for Sony’s next version, it’d include a couple cool things like Bluetooth 5.0 with multipoint connection, USB-C with fast charge, improved battery life, and  settings memory when powering off!

Wireless Hunt: Sennheiser HD1 Free

(Update: This is being posted post-humorously; I've already returned the HD1 Free IEMs as they were god awful. How do these things sell at 270 dollars!? I didn't even bother to take photos of these as they went back to quickly!)

The Pixel 3 is USB-C only. Goodbye headphone jack! Not exactly cool, my dudes, but it’s a sign of the times, I guess. I don’t really feel much like prematurely wearing out the USB-C port, and a good USB-C DAC on a dongle is something like 45 CAD normally, so I’m going to try retiring my Etymotics in favor of a Bluetooth option. I honestly don’t feel I’ll be able to tell the difference between LDAC or AptX and a wired connection at this point, so I may as well jump on a few. Can we find something as perfect as Etymotic’s offerings? Let’s find out.

First up! The Momentum HD1 Free. Fairly light weight Bluetooth neckbuds, mostly plastic construction. The cable is long and awkward, and the 6 hour battery life is mostly uninspiring for a 170 dollar (on sale!) pair of Bluetooth IEMs.

Initial impressions: I couldn’t get a fit with the stock tips. Even the large size didn’t fit my right canal properly. This is kind of expected as I’ve got big and weirdly shaped canals, so I normally gravitate toward a deeper fitting IEM. I threw on a pair of “medium” gel filled silicone Monster Super Tips and the fit was extremely good. The Super Tips in medium were a fair bit larger than the large from Sennheiser… Weird. Once fitted they were barely noticeable thanks to the weight of about 40 grams.

Sound quality wise… These are most likely getting returned. I’m streaming AptX from my Pixel 3 with high quality Google Play music source, and they’re muddy, sloppy, and veiled. They lack the clarity, speed, articulation, and intimacy of the Etymotics I’m used to, favoring a more inflated low end and recessed mids and highs. There’s also some weird sibilance on certain consonants, depending on the artist that’s likely to get fatiguing. Sound improves slightly with EQ, but it still kind of sounds like you’re smothering the music with a pillow. There are tracks they do well with, for instance Kygo’s “Here for You” comes across fantastically, and Ella’s voice is well articulated and smooth, but something like Fall Out Boy’s “The Phoenix” is an absolute mess with the midrange details a complete jumble – You can’t pick anything out.

There were very few cutouts with the Bluetooth connection, being 4.2. I expect a few as I believe the antenna is on the opposite side of where I keep my phone, and I got some barely noticeable drops, but overall solid connectivity.

In conclusion, these are great for some genres like electronic and hip hop, but not great for others like rock. I’ll likely give them a few more days but will be sending them back. I have a few more goodies on the way, so the hunt continues… Up next is the Sony WI-1000X which seem really promising with a dual driver setup (Single dynamic and single balanced armature, which I’m hoping will offer a more neutral, detailed sound), and a bunch of cool tech like ANC and a better battery life. I also snap-bought the Sennheiser Momentum True Wireless, which look like the first good pair of true wireless buds to me. Initial reviews seem to be positive, slightly v-shaped but not lacking in clarity. We’ll see what they’re like when they get here.

Good Things Come In Threes

I’m generally very good about babying my electronic devices, especially phones. I don’t ever use cases, and I very rarely if ever drop my devices. The broken phone record came to an end in Iceland this past month when my OnePlus met an Icelandic road near Hofn. Compared to most damage you see when people drop phones mine was mild – The top right corner cracked, and it was missing a bit of glass from impact. Nothing affected the functionality of the screen, and none of the glass covering the display was damaged.

(╯°□°）╯︵ ┻━┻

 …But it bothered me. So, I bought a Pixel 3.

As usual I had a few criteria for my purchase. I wanted a fast Android experience close to stock, good battery life, timely updates, and a good camera. The shortlist ended up being… Well, OnePlus again, or the Pixel 3. With the OnePlus phones just getting bigger and bigger and a great deal through Telus with my employee preferred pricing, I determined it was about time to jump back to the Google camp.

Hello darling.

Spec rundown:

·         Snapdragon 845 CPU w/ Adreno 630 GPU

·         4GB RAM

·         64 GB Storage

·         5.5” P-OLED display (2160x1080)

·         12.2MP f/1.8 OIS rear camera, 8MP f/1.8 (28mm) and 8MP f/2.2 (19mm) front cameras

·         2915mAh battery

·         148g weight

Design, performance, battery life:

The Pixel 3 comes in about a half centimeter shorter on both height and width compared to the OnePlus 3T, and about the same thickness. The front contains the very full sounding front firing stereo speakers, the dual cameras, and the gorgeous 18:9 P-OLED display which has fairly accurate colors in natural mode. Along the squeeze-sensitive aluminum sides, the only spot you’ll find buttons is the right side which holds a pretty tactile power button and volume rocker. There is nothing to really note on the top and left sides, and the bottom contains only the USB-C port and SIM tray, but no headphone jack. The back is all glass, partially textured for grip, and contains the Pixel imprint fingerprint reader and the single 12MP camera. Next to the camera is the LED flash and the flicker sensor. The phone feels premium with a good weight for it’s size, and the 5.5” model leads to great one-handed operation. The fingerprint sensor is well placed in the back and is quick to unlock the phone in my experience.

My two physical issues are the lack of headphone jack and the glass back. The included dongle does not sound as good as the DAC in my OnePlus 3T, but there are other options to explore such as a Bluetooth DAC like the Fiio BTR3 or higher quality USB-C dongles such as the Sonata II from Hidizs. The lack of headphone jack does afford the phone IP68 water resistance however, which is a jump over the 3T. The other issue I have is the glass back – Although it allows for wireless charging and Google’s implementation seems nicely textured, I’m on the fence on durability. I feel if this drops it’s pretty much game over.

#DongleLife

Performance is as expected pretty darn snappy – This is Google’s software on Google’s hardware after all, and they have tuned it to the extreme. Although the Snapdragon 845 is slightly underclocked compared to other models, and the 4GB of RAM seems to be miniscule in a field of 6GB and 8GB monsters, I don’t feel I’ve had any performance issues so far. Whether it be the awfully optimized Snapchat, or RAW editing in Lightroom, I’ve no issues with the phone. Android 9 further refines on the Android 8 experience, and the gesture-based navigation feels smooth and natural. Everything feels like Android.

#Basic

Battery feels good, and although it’s still settling down, I feel like I’ll be looking at about double the screen on time compared to the OnePlus 3T. Yesterday was about 5 hours of mixed screen usage before I plugged it in at around 15%. I could have coaxed a bit more out of it, but at that point it was bedtime. Google’s preferred quick charging option here is Power Delivery 2.0, capable of providing 18w to the phone through the USB-C port. My previous OnePlus dash charger lived in my backpack, so the Power Delivery charger will take its place. I generally find regular charge speeds off my Aukey multi-port or the 2A charger at my desk at work provide a fast enough regular charge otherwise, but it’s good to have a fast charger in case of emergency. Google is also allowing wireless charging now, but you only get the full 10w experience out of their Pixel stand – a $110 purchase which I’m still on the fence about.

Camera, software features, and other stuff:

The Pixel 3 likely offers the best camera performance in a smartphone on the market, and it does it with a single 12.2MP snapper. This is all due to Google’s software prowess, and the Pixel Visual Core co-processor. They’ve been tuning the HDR+ technology since Nexus phones, and it shows. The process is interesting – As soon as you open the camera app, it starts buffering photos into a “circular buffer”, discarding data after a few moments. As soon as you tap the shutter button, the software pulls the last nine to fifteen frames, and the phone gets to work quickly breaking the images into a grid of thousands of tiny images, and stacks and processes each section to reduce noise, increase dynamic range, and improve sharpness. This allows for zero shutter lag, and images that are consistently well exposed and sharp, even with weird lighting or movement in frame. For a single 12.2MP sensor, it does good work!

Front facing disheveled bathroom portrait selfie. Not bad separation!

Other fun features are an unrivaled portrait mode which utilizes AI learning and the dual pixel autofocus on the camera to intelligently depth-map and blur objects – Definitely not as good as a fast prime on my A7iii, but usable in a lot of situations. Super-res zoom uses the natural movement of your hand to take a larger image to crop into, increasing sharpness and detail compared to standard digital zooming. The object tracking is crazy – I don’t think I’ve seen better on a phone so far. Tap an object in frame to follow it and expose for it. It won’t let go unless the object goes out of frame or you tap the focus point again to release it. Google has also updated the camera software to allow computational RAW images to be saved, letting me post-process through Lightroom or another RAW editor. Finally, I’d like to touch on NightSight, which emulates long exposures and leans on AI to color correct images in conditions down to .3 lux. It’s intelligent enough to detect if it’s in hand or on a tripod, if there’s motion in scene, etc, and adjust the number of exposures and the exposure lengths depending.

Left: Standard HDR+ processing. Right: NightSight, handheld.

There are two front facing cameras on the Pixel 3, which is a first and feels a bit like a concession on Google’s part, but I’m happy with the performance. Like the rear camera, the front cameras are practically unrivaled in selfie performance, generally providing sharp and well exposed images regardless of lighting conditions. The inclusion of the ultrawide selfie lens is welcome and leads to much better group photos and environmental selfies.

Left: Standard front facing disheveled bathroom selfie. Right: Wide angle front facing disheveled bathroom selfie.

I won’t say the camera is the very best in every situation, but the experience is consistently good which is exactly what I’m looking for in a phone. I don’t need crazy high resolutions or zoom lenses, I just need something that nails exposure and gives me sharp images regardless of my lighting conditions. All the extra features are just icing on the cake!

Now Playing in action. Horrible music taste history included.

The Pixel has a few fun software features I like including ambient display with tap/lift to wake, and “now playing” with a history. It actively listens for music and flawlessly identifies tracks, displayed on your lock screen and in your notification bar. You can go back and check on what you’ve recently heard was well, which is great. Squeeze for assistant is cool, but I wish you could remap it to another function on the phone. Digital Wellbeing isn’t something I think I’ll use but seems like a neat concept. Really gives you an idea as to how much you use your smartphone in a day, and it’s scary how many unlocks I do in a day. I’ve yet to see how adaptive battery runs, but apparently it acts a bit like battery saver but only for less-used apps, delaying their access to data and other resources considerably.

Couple other things to note:

Unlimited full resolution video and picture storage on Google Photos until 2022. There is NO notification LED, which I’m not overly fond of. One of my favorite features on my old phones was the notification LED. The Pixel imprint fingerprint reader is quick, but the drag down to pull down the notifications feature seems a bit touch and go right now – Maybe I’m just not used to it. The included USB-C PixelBuds are not horrible, all considered. There’s no isolation, but the sound is reasonable. This phone will also get security updates out to 2021 as per Google’s policy – That means it’s relevant for quite some time to come! I also seem to miss the notification slider on the OnePlus 3T more than I thought I would. Who would have known?

Accessories included in box: USB-C Power Delivery 2.0 adapter, USB-C cable, USB-A to USB-C adapter, USB-C to 3.5mm dongle, USB-C Pixel Buds.

Overall I’m happy so far with this upgrade. Much like with the OnePlus 3T and the A7iii, good things do come in threes.

Peak Design: Fueling The Addiction

I've got a heck of a case of GAS - Gear Acquisition Syndrome! Peak Design fuels my needs. I've owned a few of their straps (The leash and the cuff) for a few months now, and can openly say I'm very happy with the anchor link system and the overall fit and finish of the straps themselves. They ooze quality. When I first saw the Everyday Backpack, I knew I'd have one at some point, and well, here we are!

I grabbed the 20L charcoal colored variant, which fits my straps pretty well with the red stitching and black Hypalon accents. It's considerably smaller than my 5.11 Tactical Rush 12 (24L) at 12L, but it has a number of advantages over it. First, it's shell is pretty much weatherproof. I can't tell you the number of times I've been stuck out with the Rush 12 in rain, only to have it get damp inside. I've never lost anything to water, but having some of your backpack goods get damp after a walk to work isn't super fun. The Everyday Backpack on the other hand has stood up to snowstorm walks without breaking a sweat! It's also structured well! The inside has a few modular folding panels that Peak Design called Flex-Fold - These provide some extra structure to the bag, and extra organization for carrying cameras, lenses, external hard drives, shoes, lunch, or whatever else you want to use the bag for.

These Flex-Fold dividers allow for another great feature the Everyday Backpack has over the Rush 12 - Side access. With the Rush 12, everything was basically dumped into the bag, and it would have to be fully unzipped to take stuff out of the bottom, the Everyday Backpack can be unzipped on either side to quickly access things. To assist with that, the straps also have a quick release, allowing you to easily swing the bag around in front of you, open it up, and grab what you desire on the go.

Now, the 12 liter storage capacity isn't a lot, but it's very flexible and expandable up to 20 liters if necessary. The one handed mag latch to open the top facilitates that. I've taken the bag configured for 2 shoots so far, and it held everything I needed plus more. Heck, if I needed more I could just strap it to the outside with the hidden outer straps.

The one spot I found it lacking though was organization. Now, the side flaps do have a fair number of pockets which are very stretchy and high quality, however I think the Rush 12 has a much more organized admin pouch on the front. The Everyday Backpack makes up for this with a couple hidden areas and a tablet section in the laptop sleeve, but I've made up for the rest by getting one of the charcoal field pouches for extra organization. I can just throw it in the main compartment which I don't use for a huge amount anyway.

Overall, it feels good, looks good, holds well, and catches eyes. This is a fantastic everyday bag and has performed well beyond my expectations. I wouldn't use it as a main bag for a 2 week trip abroad like with the Rush 12, but it would make a fantastic day/tech bag, and is perfectly capable for overnight trips.

Now, the only thing to catch more eyes and raise more questions than the bag itself would be the Capture Clip v3, oddly enough. This little quick release plate secures easily to a backpack strap and holds my camera very steady. It's made sure it's very easily accessible when needed, and doesn't jostle around a lot when moving. I'm still up in the air on this vs a strap, but I can see this being a lot more useful when travelling/hiking. Another fun note on the plate that secures to the bottom of your camera is fully compatible with Arca Swiss style tripod heads. I have a Zomei Q666, and it fits on the head without issue.

New Glass

Finally got tired of the kit lens, and after looking into things enough, came across the perfect daily lens for me! Narrowed it down to Sony's SEL35F18, but further research landed me on this Sigma 30mm F1.4 prime. I love shooting at the 30mm focal length (45mm equivalent on APS-C sensors), so something that let in even more light was a no brainer, especially at the same price. This is the first glass I've purchased for my camera since getting it many years ago, and I have to say the Sigma build quality is fantastic. I still have a lot of shooting to do on it, and a soon to be body upgrade to possibly an A6000, but initial impressions are great. Below are shots taken around 11PM on a fairly dark night, all handheld:

Performance is fantastic wide open - I was shooting between 200 and 1200 ISO, with a shutter between 1/60 and 1/250 and receiving the results above. The brick with the plaques is not at all well lit - There are a few lamps surrounding it, but the f/1.4 aperture makes it easy to pull every bit of available light in. I can't wait to get out for some low light and astrophotography. My one real complaint is my lack of EVF on my current NEX-F3, and the auto-focus is abysmal in low light, but this is a problem that can be solved by upgrading to a A6000, eventually. I should have the opportunity to test an A5100 in a little while (Similar auto-focus/speed to the A6000), so we'll see if the auto-focus impresses enough.

For some daylight shooting, I visited an air show in Debert NS today, and was pretty pleased with the shots below. After that I did a quick walk to the grocery store in town and snapped some shots around town:

Most shots taken at F/2.8 to F/5.6. The lens handled it like a boss. Again, only real downfall is my body which would have really benefited from the EVF with the bright sunlight. Auto-focus struggled a bit in the bright light with the lens wide open, but no issues stopping it down to f/2.8.

Overall happy with the purchase so far. The lens is really versatile for a prime, and is perfect for street/portrait photos that I love to do. Can't wait to throw it on a nicer body.