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Good portable speakers always comes handy. You can crank them up during parties, take them along for outdoor adventures, and even use them in lieu of your laptop speaker. And with Bluetooth standard on all devices, a portable speak­er’s wireless capabilities only add to their appeal. But when it comes to portable speakers, there’s a pleth­ora of options in the Nepali market and finding the right one that just sings to your ears, may be difficult. Here are some good options if you are investing in a portable speaker.

JBL Charge 3

Price
Rs 16,500

 For the price, the JBL Charge 3 is a steal. I own one myself and I can’t believe just how great this speaker is. It sounds great with a heavy emphasis on bass. It has two sub-woofers on the sides that pump out some of the heaviest bass notes I’ve heard in a speaker. If you’re a bass head, the JBL Charge 3 will not disappoint. While it lacks on the clarity on the higher notes, the heavier low tone of the speaker works well. The speaker is a bit on the heavier side,at 1.76 pounds (0.79 kg). You may feel a little weighed down should you carry it along, but it’s both sturdy and waterproof.

It also does not have 360-sound as only it projects sound to the front. Gesture controls are also absent,­making this speaker a very simple device that focuses solely on the sound. What it lacks in features, the speaker beautifully makes up in sound. It also comes with a feature that lets you connect to a second pair of speakers if you need more volume but the Charge 3 is pretty loud as is. I love this speaker and recommend it solely because of its impeccable sound. The speaker is a bargain but I would still recommend that you give it a try before committing.

Harman Kardon Aura Studio 2
Price
Rs 24,500

 lit­tle bit more to spend, I would suggest the Aura Studio 2 by Harman Kardon. This speaker sounds phenom­enal with very well-presented highs, mids and lows thanks to its six high-to-min ranged drives and a sin­gle downward facing sub-woofer. The speaker does not over-emphasize the bass, providing a true sound experience. Apart from sounding good, the speaker also looks great. It has a cylindrical dome on top, with white LED strips underneath glowing ever so subtly. It looks like a work of art more than a speaker.

While the design does place the speaker controls on a harder to reach awkward position on the lower side, it comes with excellent connectivity options supporting Bluetooth, AirPlay, and DLNA if you store music on your network. The speaker is a big, heavy unit that’s designed to sit on your desk rather than to be lugged along. So this speaker looks great, sounds great, and connects to everything. If you’re into a warm, rich, and slightly rumbly sound, you can’t do better than the Aura Studio 2 at this price point.

Huawei is one of the many companies out of China that is looking to change the tele­com game. By producing com­plicated networking devices to smartphones, the company has successfully turned into the ninth largest telecom com­pany in the world by revenue. It has, in recent times, found a strong foothold in Nepal and many Nepali consumers adored last year’s flagship, the P10 series. And why would they not? The phone was well-built, extremely powerful and com­petitively priced.

Building on last year’s suc­cess, the Chinese company has upped its game this year. Keeping up with industrial advancements and further fuel­ing resources into the R&D of their HiSilicon processor sub­sidiary unit, devices from Hua­wei this year are nothing but awe-inspiring.

Huawei P20/P20 Pro

Price

Rs 83,500 (P20), Rs 115,500 (P20 Pro)

 Building on the success of the well-received P10, Huawei’s P20 improves on all fronts from process­ing power to improved optics. The P20 comes with impressive specifi­cations with an in-house HiSillicon Kirin 970 processor paired with 4 GB of RAM on the P20 and 8GB RAM on the P20 Pro, and incremen­tal storage capacities of 64 GB and 128 GB respectively. The displays on both the devices run at a native resolution on 1080 x 2244, the only difference between them coming in size, with 5.8-inch IPS display gracing the P20 and a bigger 6.1-inch display for the P20 Pro.

Apart from the specifications of the phone, Huawei has focused most of its advertising on camera capabilities of their new flagships. Both devices perform extremely well in photography, partly because of the company’s partnership with the veteran camera company Leica and partly because of its adoption of artificial intelligence in image processing. Complementing its soft­ware, Huawei has also opted for a dual-camera (12 MP x 2) for the P20 and a triple-camera (40MP, 8MP, 20MP) for the P20 Pro.

Without a doubt, the triple camera on the P20 Pro is impres­sive and benchmark scores from DxOMark rank the phone’s photo­graphic capabilities well above all offerings from Google, Apple and Samsung. Both the P20 and P20 Pro are impressive phones from Hua­wei and are well worth the jump in model numbering.

MediaPad M3 8.1

Price

Rs 30,000

 Apart from a new flagship, Huawei has also released a new tablet in 2018. The newest itera­tion in their tablet-line, the M5, hasn’t made its way into the Nepali market yet, even though the older M3 has been available for a while. Newer formats of the M-line of tablets have seen countless updates, but tablets by nature don’t need as much power as your smartphone. Used mostly for media consumption and light reading, the M3 still holds its own in these regards.

Powered by a HiSilicon Kirin 950 and paired with 4 GB of RAM, the slate is pretty powerful for regular tasks, web-browsing and media consumption. The build of the tablet is also stellar: sleek, thin and light, with an alu­minum body that helps the tablet look and feel strong and expen­sive. The screen is good with an 8.1-inch IPS LCD panel running at an impressive high-resolution of 2560 x 1600 pixels. The tablet is great for non-demanding tasks, but high-performance gaming is not its suit. Regardless, the tablet is a great option if you want a device for media consumption.

Why are there so few women leaders in Nepal, in any field you can name? And what can we do to develop leadership skills in women?

These were some of the questions OWN IT Nepal, a one-day women leadership summit on March 31, explored. The event, held on the occasion of International Women’s Month, and organized by Women LEAD Nepal, took place in Bougainvilla Banquets, Tripureshwor, and saw more than 250 youths come together to celebrate and normalize women’s leadership. The event was organized with an aim to bridge the gap between female leaders and the young women who admire them.

The event was separated into four different sessions: the mainstage panel, the breakout sessions, the workshops and the office-hour sessions. Apart from the mainstage panel, all the other three experimental sessions were curated in a fashion where young women could learn essential leadership skills from accomplished young female leaders of Nepali society. The mainstage panel saw discussions between ‘Women in Public Service and Politics’ with Shanta Manavi (Former Livestock and Poultry Development Minister), Ranju Darshana (Former mayoral candidate for Kathmandu) and Srijana Tiwari (Undersecretary, Ministry of General Administration). Another one was among ‘Women Trailblazers’ with Maya Gurung (Seven Summits), Priya Adhikari (Helicopter Pilot), and Saraswati Adhikari (Circus Kathmandu). Likewise, the third one, ‘Leading Feminist Change’, featured Durga Sob (Founding President of the Feminist Dalit Organization), Dhruba Ghimire (General Secretary of Rural Women’s Action Network), and Laxmi Tamang (Vice President of Women’s Rehabilitation Center).

The mainstage panel was open to everyone attending the event, and smaller experimental sessions were facilitated by women leaders of their respective fields. In organizing this event, OWN IT Nepal created a platform for young women to get inspired, and interact with the women in leadership roles in government and civil society.

The versatility of a laptop has helped it stand out from all other kinds of computers. A few years ago, business houses and offices had bulky desktop computers. They have all been replaced by thinner, smaller laptops. Corporate houses are getting populated more and more with portable computers which has further influenced the growth of professional laptops. Among the glitz and glamor of powerful gaming laptops, there thrives a market of computers built around productivity. We look at two powerful professional laptops that would see you through all kinds of work.  

 Lenovo ThinkPad T470  

 Price

Rs 132,000  

 ThinkPads are known to be professional busi­ness-grade laptops, and from the outside, the T470 looks sleek and classy. It features the ThinkPad style, no nonsense aesthetic, and smooth black rectangular shape with a nice luxurious feeling soft-touch mate­rial on to the outside. Unfortunately, the material does not cover the insides of the laptop where the soft-touch material would have done wonders for my palm. Staying true to the professional aspect of the laptop, it comes with powerful specifications: a Core i5-7200U paired with an ample 8GB of RAM.

It also comes with an unimpressive dedicated GPU from AMD, the Radeon M330. While the graphics chip has enough horse power to run a few moderate games, don’t expect it to run the latest triple A titles. What does work in the laptop’s favor is the hybrid battery system with an inbuilt 3-Cell battery, but also a removable battery caddy with additional 6-cell bat­tery. With a total of 9-cell worth of power, the laptop can run off the battery for over 17 hours. That’s much higher than the MacBook Pro’s 16 hours. The laptop also comes with an exceptional keyboard, probably one of the best out there. The keys have decent travel and are responsive enough to help improve your typing speed. But the audio and the display are two aspects that works against this laptop’s favor.  

Dell XPS 15

Price

Rs 155,000  

 Dell’s new XPS line is truly impressive with a stunningly bright and vibrant ‘Infinity Display’ that minimizes the bezels around the screen on the laptop. Truly, the XPS 15’s screen is brilliant with almost a 100 percent coverage of sRGB and Adobe RGB color tones, a feature that enable creatives to work on the laptop with astounding color accuracy. The laptop is also very powerful on the inside, pow­ered by a Core i5-7300 HQ processor, 8GB of RAM and 256 GB of SSD Storage. And it comes with an impressive and powerful GTX series graphic card, the GTX 1050. With such a powerful graphic processor, the laptop has plenty of power even if you wanted to game on it.

Gaming performance aside, the XPS 15 is a pow­erhouse when it comes to productivity. While the earlier laptop might have been suitable for more resource efficient work, the XPS is tailored for power hungry tasks such as video editing, photo editing and 3D modeling. The laptop also feels exception­ally premium with a nice carbon-fiber finish and a decent keyboard. The trackpad has excellent tracking and gesture support through Windows Pre­cision drivers. If you want a laptop with the power to handle all of your resource heavy programs, the XPS 15 is a great choice.  

In April last year, Samsung released its flagship phones, the Galaxy S8 and S8+. Revolutionizing its design language, the South Korean company now had phones that, along with their almost bezel-less sides, had managed to significantly reduce the bezels at the top and the bot­tom as well. Marketed as ‘Unbox your phone’, both the S8 and the S8+ had wowed customers while heavily influencing the smart­phone design in 2017. Now in 2018, Samsung has announced the suc­cessor to the much-loved S8 with Galaxy S9 and S9+. The S9 and the S9+ are both excel­lent phones with top of the line specifications that many upcoming flagships will mimic. The phones are either powered by Samsung’s inhouse SOC the Exynos 9810 or the Snapdragon 845, both octa-core pro­cessors. The S9 comes with 4GB of RAM to support the processor while the S9+ comes with 6GB.

The internals are powerful and a significant improvement for the S8 lines. But the external design of the phone leaves a lot to be desired. It essentially looks exactly the same as its predecessors with a little more shaved off the top and bottom bezels. The screen-to-body ratio is the same (84.2 percent, with a 5.8 inch screen on the S9 while the S9+ has a 6.2 inch screen, both incredi­bly vibrant and crisp displays with 1440 x 2960 resolution). We have seen companies like Apple and Mic­rosoft stick to a well-adopted prod­uct design, so what Samsung has done does not come as a surprise. The S8 was a well-designed phone (aesthetically, at least); the S9 line looks just as sleek and modern. The rear glass panel does tend to attract a fair amount of fingerprints but a phone cover should easily solve the issue.

The phone is also consumer friendly with features like the head­phone jack and an external micoSD slot adding to its appeal. The awk­wardly positioned fingerprint reader on the back has also been moved to a more convenient location right under the camera module which makes it easier to hit. The S9 line, moreover, has a feature never before seen on a Samsung device: stereo speakers. The S9 fires music from a dedicated speaker at the bottom and the earpiece, which makes media consumption on this device signifi­cantly better. The speakers also have a better sound.

The most important change, how­ever, comes in the form of a vastly improved variable aperture camera. Smartphones of 2017 and early 2018 have all competed on camera per­formance, which has led to phones like the iPhone X and Google Pixel 2 producing remarkable pictures. As a response, Samsung has invested heavily on the cameras and it does not disappoint. The 12 MP rear cam­era works two apertures, f/1.5 and f/2.4; the camera will perform much better in low light with the aperture wide-open. The S9+ comes with an additional 12 MP telephoto lens for a closer zoom. With such impressive specifications, the S9 phones pro­duce great photos but still fall short against pictures from the iPhone X or the Google Pixel 2. Which is not to say the camera is bad, it’s a remark­ably good camera, it just falls short against its competitors.

While the S9 and S9+ have some really great updates, there are some aspects where Samsung failed to improve. The battery life on the phones are still sub-par and the phones are jam-packed with Sam­sung software. Software like Bigsby, Samsung’s voice assistant that’s still far inferior to Google Assistant, and AR Emoji, a response to Apple’s Ani­moji, all feel gimmicky and useless.

With the S9 and S9+, Samsung seems to be improving rather inno­vating. Instead to making dras­tic changes to the S8 line, it has managed to uniformly improve many aspects of the phone. The new flagships from Samsung are great devices and highly recom­mended if you’re in the market for a flagship phone.  

From listening to podcasts at night to enjoy­ing music on your daily commute, audio plays a big part in our everyday life. I use my phone extensively to listen to music on my way to work, which is why I’m very particular about the audio quality I want. After going through countless earphones, equalizer settings and third-party hacks, I’ve finally landed on prod­ucts and settings that help me get deep sus­tained bass and sparkling highs on an easy budget. Here’s what you need to know about.  

Mi In-Ear
Headphones Pro
Price Rs 2,849

While there is a newer version to the Mi In-Ear Headphones Pro, I’m more familiar with the older brother, and I love it. The ear­phones come with two precision driver units, one that produces low notes, much like a tra­ditional subwoofer while the other balanced armature driver produces crisp high notes. A combination of these two drivers produces sound that does not get overpowered by bass-heavy songs while adding a kick even to lighter acoustic drum notes. The sound signature on this device never feels off on any genre and it’s basically like having a dedicated subwoofer inside your earphone, which is wonderful.

As good as the earphones sound, it’s built to last as well with aluminum body casings and braided cables. Having access to additional functionality through the in-line remote is also useful.  

Noozxoide EIZO-rewire
PRO Software
Price Free

While the Mi In-Ear Headphones Pro are wonderful on their own, they need a bit of a push from the software side to help them hit home. While the Mi In-Ear Headphones Pro have punchy bass, I prefer a more sustained, lingering bass. This is the kind of bass you get with a good subwoofer.

For sustained bass, Android users can use an app called Noozxoide EIZO-rewire PRO that helps further enhance audio by interact­ing with your smartphone’s Digital-to-Analog converter. The app stretches low-notes a bit so that they sound sustained even over smaller speaker units. Play around with the settings of the app to equalize audio to your liking. This software is free and works on all Android devices.

However, if you have a rooted phone, you can install one more third-party software to further improve your smartphone audio. A user named Ben Feutrill on xda-developers has uploaded an Audio Mod called ‘eXtreme­Beats Aural Maximizer’ that works with many different audio enhancement suites like Beats Audio, PureAudio Engine, SRS and xLoud to further tune your internals for better audio performance. This mod does not have a soft­ware controls that lets you play around with the settings and all enhancements come baked in. But, in my experience, the eXtremeBeats Aural Maximizer plays really well with the Noozxoide EIZO-rewire Pro and working the two of them in tandem produces audiophile bliss for all kinds of listeners.  

 With the advent of Instagram and Snapchat, internet denizens have taken to experiment­ing with smartphone photography. Smart­phones have turned into one of the easiest and most convenient ways of capturing important moments. But their photographic capabilities are held back due to the device’s multipurpose use. There are plenty of new smartphones that have tried to provide quality photos and faux depth of field options. But they are still not capable of competing with dedicated cam­eras. Which is why, if you want to take your photog­raphy skills to the next level, I suggest investing in a good Digital Single Lens Reflex (DSLR) camera.

Canon 750D

Price Rs 84,990 (with 18-55mm kit lens)

While there are cheaper DLSR cameras by Canon in the market right now, the 750D is going to help you understand the capabilities of more professional and expensive camera gear. I suggest the 750D because it offers a simple function­ally without having to dive deep into the manual side of photography. It’s also relatively cheap and comes with a host of professional options without the steep learning curve of more professional photography gear. Apart from the image quality of a dedicated APS-C sensor, upgrading to a DSLR will help you expand your photographic skills by opening doors for specialized lenses, filters and speed lights. Having access to these kinds of equipment will not only help you understand photography better but also expand your visual creativity by allowing you to explore and experiment with composition and field of view. For all the social media denizens who don’t want to wade through countless photos, import them through professional photo editing software and edit them before posting them up on a social media platform, the camera comes with built-in Near-Field Communication (NFC) and Wi-Fi chips to let you eas­ily transfer photos from your camera to your phone. Once the photos are on your smartphone, you can use any post-processing app that you like to give it some flair.

Canon 50mm f/1.8

Price Rs 14,000 approx.

 Once you’ve entered the field of DSLR p h o t o g r a ­phy, you’ll find countless accessories for your camera that you might find daunting if you’re a beginner to DLSR photography. One of the most important accessories you can buy for your camera are differ­ent kinds of lenses that do very different things like provide a wider aperture for low-light photography and shallow bokeh; telephoto lenses that will help you zoom into your subject from further away; and wide-angle lenses that will allow you to capture more of the field of view from your vantage point. But as a beginner, the best lens that you can invest in would be the Canon 50mm f/1.8.

This lens is one of the cheapest Canon manufac­tures and is a great update to the 18-55mm kit lens that comes with your camera. The 50mm is a prime lens, which means it’s locked at a focal length of 50mm; you won’t be able to zoom in and out of your frame as with the 18-55. But since you’re locked at a specific focal range, beginner photographers will have to move around quite a bit to find the perfect composition. This can be taken as an advantage, how­ever, since prime lenses produce quality photos and learning to work with fixed-focal length lenses will help you work with them better should you choose to upgrade to a better lens in the future. The 50mm is also a fast lens because of its wide f/1.8 aperture and produces really nice shallow depth-of-field when taking portrait photos.

We have seen considerable advancement in laptops in the past few years, from those with powerful desktop-grade graphics to the super-thin and portable ones. But among all high-per­forming, expensive computers out there, there are also those that give you the performance you need at a price that doesn’t burn a hole in your wallet. Here are some of the best bang-for-buck laptops that you should consider.

Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air

Price

Rs 84,999 (12.5 inch) Rs 117,999 (13.3 inch)

The Xiaomi Mi Notebook Air comes at a defining moment for the Chinese company. With Xiaomi trying to make a name for itself outside of the smart­phone market, it has started manufacturing all kinds of tech products like rice cookers and air purifiers, to mention a few. As a result, the company has also started building laptops and with the Mi Notebook Air, it has managed to get quite a few things right.

At first glance, the laptop looks exactly like a MacBook Air, just without the shiny Apple logo, or even a Mi logo. The laptop is beautifully clean and minimalist and it doesn’t hurt that it copies Apple’s brilliant hardware design language. But as much as it’s a great-looking device, it’s also got the power to back up its performance.

The laptop comes equipped with Intel Sixth Gen­eration i5 processor clocked at 2.5 GHz. Paired with plentiful 8GB of RAM and a dedicated GeForce MX 150, the device is fast and can even hold its own in many modern games. With its small size and power­ful internals, the Mi Notebook Air is a great choice for anyone looking for a good laptop at this price point.

Dell Inspiron 15 7559

Price

Rs 82,000

Usually, Dell’s Inspiron series is considered low­er-end, business centric laptop. With the Inspiron 15 7559 however, Dell has upped the line to cater to gamers on a budget. The laptop offers stellar gaming performance for a reasonable price, nor does it look as obnoxious as many other gaming laptops. Gam­ing accents have been dumbed down for a sleeker, no-frills design that only has a red accented Dell logo on the top. Overall, the laptop looks like a device that you could easily take into a meeting or a classroom without feeling like a kid brining his toy over for show-and-tell, while hiding some real gaming perfor­mance underneath.

The laptop come with an Intel Sixth Generation i5 processor clocked at a fast 3.2 GHz. It is equipped with 8 GB of RAM and a GeForce 960M 4GB dedicated graphics card. While the 960M can’t hold a candle up to more recent Pascal-based graphics cards, it is capable enough of running complex triple A titles without a hitch. While the laptop has many niggles like an average display panel and sound quality, the computer is the perfect choice for patrons who want to game on a budget while keeping it relevant for more professional settings.