2019 recap - my faves


It's a new year, folks, it's 2020.  How many optometry jokes are we going to make for the next 364 days eh?  The saving grace I reminded someone about this new year is that we could start writing 2019 by accident as we do in most years, but then just stop before you write 19 and you're okay?  Or just nix out the 19 and it should be fine.

Anyways, the morning of the first day of a new year we take the time to reflect on the past year.  Well, we do that on the weeks up too, but usually, today is the quietest ... sleeping in, taking time to clean up.  Finally, a quiet lull...

...and then that's when sites will post these reviews of the year past (if they haven't already).

Seeing as I'd been fairly busy, so here is my quick recap of the past year.
I'll admit that this past year has been the year that I really slowed down.  I can't ignore that, and you obviously had noted.

That being said, I did get some reviews out this year (52 actually), so let's talk about the reviews

I want to start with what I think the biggest theme was for the year.

Overall, I think the top 'theme' that I'd have to say was the theme of the Smart Home.  This year we got a new Google Home mini (now called the Nest mini), a couple assistants with screens (the Nest Hub, the Nest Hub Max), which just make an awesome helpful assistant that I now have in just about every room in the house ... but to make it an even smarter house, I have Nest Thermostat and Philips Hue lights (and a lightstrip, even a WiZ light), there's even a doorbell we looked at.

The fact that we can ask Google to turn on the lights in the living room, set up an automated light to turn on at 7am to help wake up my son, I can watch recipes in the kitchen and set timers, and even with the touch screen can pull up and see what the temperature is and turn up the house temperature, or just ask Google to do that.

The house is a little smarter now.  I see more and more of that happening in the coming years.  So much fun.

Okay, those are the 'accessories', what about the major devices? 

Firstly, most of you are here for the phones, and what was my favourite of 2019?

Obviously Pixel.  The Pixel 4 is an amazing phone, and as much as folks who throw around on different sites about all the problems Google has with Pixel, I really don't buy it.  It's a solid phone.

Pixel has to be my top favourite of 2019.  I do have to have a full review out for it soon.  Soon, I promise.

Full props to the other phones that I'd reviewed this past year, here's a couple of my faves: 

 - Huawei P30 Pro is just a beast of a phone, and I use it for most of the videos on the site still.  When I'm playing games at home it's the Huawei I'm picking up.
 - Samsung Galaxy Note 10+ is also a beast of a phone, like there's nothing wrong with it, except for its price, which is why I don't have it in my top space

Non Major devices?
Wearables - Casio's new watch improved on what they were doing in last years'.  I even liked the Mi Band 4 which was so severely limited - but enough to still grab my attention.
Portables - the Pixelbook Go was cool, but not enough to really pry me away from the original Pixelbook.  There were a few others, but nothing else really made me perk up - although the Zenbook was pretty cool
Audio - I reviewed probably the best sounding headphones ever, the AIAIAI TMA-2, however expensive they are.

I did more reviews this past year, so you can go and look them up. 

I'm looking forward to more next year.

2019 was an interesting year.  More smart home, the start of a 'foldable' phone genre, something to take the heat off of what people hated in 2018 for phones - the notch.  Notice we don't hear any more comments about it.

Thanks for tuning in during 2019 everybody!  You have no idea how appreciated it is.