Naim’s mega little speaker and light therapy headphones

Let’s hear it for a light therapy headset
There are plenty of light therapy devices around. But most of these work on the obvious light sensors, our eyes. The HumanCharger, uniquely, uses the ears. It takes the form of a pair of earphones with LEDs that nest in your ear canals and beam light into the recesses of the skull.

The claimed benefits of 12 minutes a day spent wearing the earphones are increased energy and mental alertness, improved mood and, if you’ve been on a long-haul flight, decreased jetlag. 

Devices made to make you feel better are hard to assess. My experience with the iPod Shuffle-like HumanCharger was pleasant if unremarkable. I did feel in good shape having tried it, but there could have been many reasons for that and we know correlation doesn’t imply causation. But using it is easy, and the research on the website is interesting, so why not? HumanCharger, from £175, from humancharger.com.

The little speaker that makes mega noise
If you loved Naim’s beautiful and loud-as‑heck Mu-so 2nd Generation music player that I featured in October, but would like to do the multiroom thing with the same stellar standard of kit, there’s now a brilliant, smaller, satellite version, the 2nd gen Qb. 

A 21cm cube with Naim’s statement “ship’s wheel” control knob on top, the Qb looks tiny but packs almost as big a punch as its £1,299 big brother. The bigger Mu-so can be hooked up to multiroom with as many as five Qbs, or you could just have five standalone Qbs dotted around the house.

With an array of speakers, including as big a downward-firing bass driver as possible, 300 watts of serious spatial sound and as many streaming options as you could want, the little Qb is a pretty superb player in its own right. 

As with any music player, I would keep things simple and just subscribe to Tidal for CD-plus quality streamed music direct from WiFi to the machine; then Bluetooth from your phone or tablet anything that’s not on Tidal. But, whatever your streaming bag, the Qb will comfortably accommodate.

There’s also a variety of different coloured speaker panels so if the black box look doesn’t suit, you can colour-coordinate with your home. Naim Mu-so Qb 2nd Gen, £749, from naimaudio.com.

Apple’s insanely high-spec new laptop
Despite people – sometimes me – proclaiming the slow death of the laptop, Apple has put its faith firmly in the form with the latest MacBook Pro. It has an insanely high spec, even in its basic configuration, but you can opt for 64GB of memory, an 8-core, 2.4GHz processor, an enhanced graphics card and 8TB of solid-state storage, and walk out of the Apple Store £5,769 lighter – albeit with a machine that I reckon will still be acceptable in 2030. 

The 16in display is huge, with all the resolution and colour depth anyone could need. The battery life is amazing, and while the “Magic Keyboard” is mostly an older-generation MacBook keyboard retooled, it’s a welcome reappearance – more precise and less prone to clogging with dirt. MacBook Pro 16 inch, from £2,799, from apple.com.

The ultimate kitchen caffeine rush
A couple of years ago, I had Jura’s £2,595 Z8 bean-to-cup coffee machine as a house guest. It offered buyers near-professional coffee-making in the home, but it’s big, and in a house with just one or two people it’s possibly a bit over the top.

I still love Jura, though, so I keep an eye on its brightly lit shop by Baker Street station. Which is where I fell in love with this new Jura, the Ena 8, which is really more suitable for a home. The all-important flat white it produces, I was told by the man at Jura, is a simplified version (whatever that means) of the Z8’s, but it’s still way better than the one most coffee shops offer. 

What else is there to love about the Ena 8? In the Swiss-est way, Jura has ironed out every tiny design irritation earlier machines had – even the quirky user interface is almost perfect now. And the whole thing looks like a chemistry lab. Jura Ena 8, £975, from uk.jura.com.

A “pocket” cinecamera with Hollywood cred
Blackmagic Design’s digital cinema cameras, first launched in 2012, are fast becoming a Hollywood industry standard. The company now also makes portable cameras of a similar standard for ultra-keen video enthusiasts or those having a stab at making their own movie. The latest, the Pocket Cinema 6k, produces extraordinary quality footage.

It is rugged and, so long as you are prepared to learn how to get the most from it, user-friendly. The battery life can be as little as 20 minutes, though, so you need spares. Or there’s a great battery grip that will give you two hours’ shooting, but does render the already tenuous “Pocket” name redundant. You need to buy lenses separately, but you can use standard DSLR glass. Blackmagic Pocket Cinema 6K, from £2,099 body only, from blackmagicdesign.com.