Technically Speaking...

Let me start with an honest confession. I have never really been a great fan of “luxury” brands in the world of gadgets. 

And there is a good reason for that. I believe that gadgets should have a certain utility; performance that should stand out. Sometimes, “luxury” gadget brands are designed more for snob value, and for their flashy looks than for utility. And that bothers me a little. 

I’ve often been led into a living room by someone who wanted to show off their audio equipment that cost a kidney-and-a-half. A fancy luxury brand adorned the speakers’ front grills, and the speakers looked fabulous. But that’s the problem. Speakers should sound good, not look good. I didn’t have the heart to tell my friend that he could have bought speakers at half the price that would have sounded twice as good. Frankly, he may not have cared — because perhaps the whole point was to display the brand and not to listen the music. Each to their own. 

Somewhere in the 21^st century we’ve gone from building gadgets that served the purpose of utility, to building expensive eye candy. Now you may have been led to believe that a more expensive device comes with better features, better hardware, and a better experience. However, you’d be quite wrong. A classic example is the Vertu — a phone that always made me flinch. That price! For a phone that didn’t have the same functionality as a simple iPhone or Android phone. 

Fortunately — there are exceptions — and times when you may just feel that it is worth mortgaging that house. Here is a small list compiled by the editorji tech team. 

Sennheiser’s HE 1 headphones

These are, without any exaggeration, the most expensive headphones in the world. They’re also arguably, the best. At a price of around Rs.4.5 million, you get eight tube amplifiers suspended in a vacuum, built into a monolith of Carrara marble. The audio is run through eight DACs, and an industry leading transducer makes possible frequency responses of as low as 8Hz and as high as 100 kHz. The total harmonic distortion comes in at a mere 0.01%, which means that the tiniest of inconsistencies in recording will be noticeable on the HE 1s. Based on performance alone, there’s little else that compares to them. If you don’t believe me, put them on (and that’s an artistic performance by itself) and listen to a binaural recording. You will literally jerk your head in surprise to hear that trumpet playing a few feet away from you!

Devialet Gold Phantom

When it comes to high tech in a box, nothing quite compares in looks or performance to a Devialet Phantom. It is, superficially, a wireless or Bluetooth speaker. But that’s where that the comparison comes to an end — because this little box can turn out 4,500 watts! More than a 100 decibels, which almost got this categorised as a weapon! A single speaker is fabulous — but a pair, synced together and mounted on a stand look other worldly, and the sound is surreal.

Bowers & Wilkins 802 D3 

And finally, a perennial favourite of ours — the Bowers & Wilkins Diamond. There are plenty who wonder whether high-end speakers are really worth it — and when you take into account the $44,000 price tag for a pair of Bowers & Wilkins’ 802 D3 loudspeakers, you may even agree with them. But its legendary dome tweeter, Continuum cone and B&W’s Matrix cylinders aren’t subjective features — they’re facts. A non-audiophile layperson’s inability to notice the intricacies of its sound reproduction isn’t a failure of the speaker, but of the industry. Those that know its worth, will know there’s little else that comes close.

Acer Predator 21X gaming laptop

Calling Acer’s Predator 21X a laptop is quite misleading — at 8.5 kilos, it’ll break any lap you set it on. What isn’t misleading however, is its performance. It packs in a quad-core Intel Core i7 processor, two NVIDIA GTX 1080 GPUs in SLI, and at centre stage, a 21-inch ultrawide HD display, that’s (wait for it) ‘curved’. It also includes Tobii eye-tracking technology for compatible games, and all this hardware makes the 21X a rather thirsty laptop. It needs two power bricks to keep it running, and battery life isn’t the best in the business. But when you’re paying almost Rs.850,000, battery life is the least of your concerns. There’s another problem too — the 21X is in limited production. Only 300 models were ever made, and they’re all sold out. Not surprising, though, when you realise it’s unarguably the world’s most powerful gaming laptop.

Sirin Lab’s Solarin smartphone

On the face of it, the Solarin from Sirin Labs looks like an Android smartphone with a rather outlandish skin and gold-plated sides. But give it another second, and you’ll begin to understand a bit of why this device costs almost Rs.1 million. The Solarin comes with a button at the back which switches it into a ‘secure’ mode. The Android OS is morphed into a matrix-themed screen with access to only your phone and text messages. This enhanced security mode encrypts all calls and messages coming into and going out from the device, using 256-bit AES military-grade encryption. Rest easy knowing that the Solarin also comes with security support on 24-hour standby.

RED 8K Camera

Now you’ve probably heard a lot about 4K, but 8K is what’s set to blow it out of the water. Even though there’s barely any device that plays content in 8K resolution, many videographers have switched to shooting in the format, with a few advantages. For instance, you may need to shell out almost $55,000 for just the brain of RED’s Monstro 8K camera, but recording in a higher resolution and then playing it out in a lower resolution gives creators room to manoeuvre. When you say 8K, it means it is eight times the pixel resolution of the most commonly used high-definition format, 1080p, and zooming in to stabilise footage, or frame shots differently is a dream with this set up. There’s also RED’s incredible colour science and RAW formats that make this camera worth
every penny you spend.

All these products fill out every box when it comes to specifications in their respective arenas, and then some. They are at the very pinnacle of technological innovation, and serve a much larger purpose than pure sales. They’re more of a challenge to their rivals, almost as if to say “let’s see you do better than this” — and yet deliver a fantastic product. 

Missing from the list are some of those ten-million speakers and amplifier sets that won’t sound good unless there is an absolutely pristine high resolution audio recording because, let’s face it, most of us don’t have those recordings and are quite happy curling up with Apple Music or Spotify. Also missing are (shudder) gold-plated iPhones and diamond-encrusted laptops because, well, you don’t really need me to give a reason!

One last thought to leave you with. 

The battle in luxury high tech has been fought on brand, on bling, and, sometimes, on high-quality performance. In all these cases, the differentiating factor has often been the hardware. In the days ahead, that could change as luxury brands start to highlight software that gives certain special experiences. We are already seeing high-end OLED TVs touting their Smart or AI features as much as the quality of the display. This will accelerate. At the top of my wish list — a high-end audio set up that comes with a pre-bundled high-resolution music-streaming service!