Verdict

An Aldi exclusive, the Beldray 2-In-1 Cordless Vacuum (BEL01088ALFOB) is a super-cheap stick vacuum cleaner. It’s not that powerful, but at this price that can be forgiven. Think of this as a grab-and-go cleaner for smaller jobs, working in tandem with a plug-in vacuum cleaner, and you’ve got the picture. If you want more powerful cordless cleaning, look elsewhere, though.

Introduction

Most cordless vacuum cleaners tend to be a lot more expensive than their rival plug-in models, down to the costs of miniaturisation and batteries. The Beldray 2-In-1 Cordless Vacuum (BEL01088ALFOB), an Aldi exclusive until stocks run out, is something a bit different: it costs just £54.99.

It feels a bit more plasticky than its high-end rivals, but for simple jobs, it works well enough and that price can’t be knocked.

Design and features

• Very lightweight
• Simple range of accessories
• Easy to use

While the Beldray 2-In-1 Cordless Vacuum may feel a little more cheaply made than its high-end rivals, such as the Dyson V15 Detect, it doesn’t feel fragile. Its plasticky body has an advantage: this vacuum cleaner is very light at 2.45kg. I found it exceptionally easy to pick up and move around.

The angle of the handle tends to push the vacuum cleaner down. I found this good for cleaning floors but when trying to lift the Beldray 2-In-1 Cordless Vacuum to clean around the ceiling, I felt as though I needed a bit more effort to lift it.

This vacuum cleaner has a removable battery. There’s no dock, but it’s easy to remove the battery for charging if you don’t have a cable in the cupboard where you’ll store the cleaner.

As this is a cheap vacuum cleaner, there are only two accessories in the box: a motorised floor head and a combination crevice tool/brush. The latter doesn’t have a clip to lock it into place, staying on with friction only.

It’s good to see that this tool can clip onto the wand, so you can carry it around as you get on with your vacuuming.

LEDs at the front of the floor head help light up where you’re going and it’s nice to see this on such a low-cost vacuum cleaner.

Controls are simple: squeeze the trigger once to turn on low power, again to go to high power and once more to turn the machine off. A set of three LEDs turn off one by one to show you the current charge of the vacuum cleaner.

There’s a 1.2-litre dust container on this model, which is larger than on many vacuum cleaners, and proves handy if you don’t want to empty the Beldray 2-In-1 Cordless Vacuum very often. Emptying is quite easy: the bottom flap opens up so that dirt can go into the bin.

You can also remove the filter from this access point, which helps get out any stubborn dirt. Still, it would have been better if the entire bin could be removed, as that makes it easy to give a deep clean from time to time.

Performance

• Relatively low power
• Does well on more basic jobs
• Good battery life

You can’t expect a lot of power from a cheap vacuum cleaner such as this, and the Beldray 2-In-1 Cordless Vacuum (BEL01088ALFOB) doesn’t have a lot of raw power. Measuring it at the nozzle, I tested the cleaner’s power in airwatts (AW) – this uses both suction power and airflow. On low power, the cleaner got 22AW, which is very low, while high power jumped to 38AW, which is still a lot lower than much of the competition.

For example, the Shark WandVac System starts at 63AW, while the handheld Hoover H-Handy 700 runs at the same 63AW. Raw power is a good indicator of performance, particularly with handheld tools: the more suction you have, the quicker you can work and the bigger the bits of debris that you can collect.

For regular vacuum cleaning, the efficiency of the floor head plays an important role in performance, agitating dirt to be sucked up. To test the vacuum cleaner, I put it through my real-world tests. 

Starting on carpet, I spread an ‘X’ of flour onto my test carpet, and then gave the Beldray 2-In-1 Cordless Vacuum (BEL01088ALFOB) a pass-through (forwards and backwards) to see how much dirt was removed. The results weren’t bad given the low power of the vacuum cleaner: a lot of mess has gone, but there are clearly clumps left behind.

I then vacuumed the bottom of the mess on High power. This did well, removing the remaining dirt there. I then found that high power was enough to remove the rest of the mess, although it took a few sweeps from different angles to get everything.

I combed at hair into the carpet, then gave the vacuum cleaner a forwards and backwards pass over it. Here, it did well on low power, removing the cat hair completely.

Next, I moved on to the tough edge test, sprinkling a teaspoon of flour onto carpet tiles, right up to the skirting board. The results here weren’t as impressive. On low power, the vacuum left a lot of mess.

Moving to high power, I needed a few sweeps from different angles, but there was still some mess left at the end. This tough test was a little too hard for this vacuum cleaner.

Finally, I moved on to my hard floor test, dropping a teaspoon of rice onto the floor. Passing the Beldray 2-In-1 Cordless Vacuum (BEL01088ALFOB) through forwards and backwards, it got all of the rice on low, with the controls proving an advantage: as I had to move to high power first before turning the cleaner off, this little boost was enough to make sure that no grains dropped back out.

I found the  ​Beldray 2-In-1 Cordless Vacuum (BEL01088ALFOB) quite loud, starting at 70.5dB on low and 72.7dB on high. It’s quite a harsh sound from this vacuum cleaner, so I certainly knew when it was turned on.

Battery life is 41m on low and 25m on high in my tests. That’s more than you might think from a cheap vacuum cleaner, but the low suction helps here: the Shark WandVac System is more powerful, so lasts a lot less time on a charge.

Of course, it’s not just about battery life but how far you can clean. I found that with the Beldray 2-In-1 Cordless Vacuum (BEL01088ALFOB), I’d have to give mess multiple sweeps, whereas other cleaners would tackle the mess on one. That reduces the cleaning area, and I think of the Beldray 2-In-1 Cordless Vacuum (BEL01088ALFOB) as more of an add-on to an existing plug-in vacuum cleaner.

Latest deals

Available from Aldi.

Veredicto

Contra viento y marea, Under Armour, JBL y el mismo Dwayne Johnson han logrado crear un par de auriculares realmente impresionantes. El diseño seguro muestra que las tres partes entienden claramente las necesidades de los asistentes al gimnasio, mientras que la sólida calidad de audio y los modos ANC, aunque superados en otros lugares, aún son lo suficientemente competentes como para hacer un paquete tentador en general.

Introducción

Reuniendo la experiencia de Under Armour, JBL y Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson, los auriculares de entrenamiento supraaurales UA Project Rock tienen que verse (y oírse) para creerse.

Cada vez que una celebridad se involucra en una pieza de tecnología, no puedo evitar hacer una mueca de dolor, ya que generalmente es una señal de advertencia de lo que se avecina. Will.i.am puso su nombre a una serie de productos extraños en la década de 2010 (¿alguien recuerda el reloj inteligente Puls?), ¿Y quién puede olvidar la desastrosa consola de juegos de Soulja Boy? (Claramente, la mayoría de nosotros lo hemos hecho).

El precedente es difícil de ignorar, pero esta vez las tres partes detrás de estos auriculares de entrenamiento tienen el ingenio para ofrecer el ingrediente secreto para contrarrestar la tendencia.

Dwayne Johnson claramente conoce su camino en el gimnasio, conocimiento que es clave para diseñar un par de auriculares para personas con mentalidad de fitness. Agregue el historial de JBL de producir productos de gran sonido y Under Armour con su ropa deportiva, y hay una promesa. Después de varias semanas de pruebas, el veredicto está dado.

Diseño

• Estética discreta, totalmente negra.
• Clasificación IPX4
• Almohadillas para los oídos cómodas y transpirables.

Mire los auriculares Project Rock y no hay duda de que su uso no es para ningún otro lugar que no sea un gimnasio. El diseño completamente negro junto con los dos íconos de toros en ambos auriculares muestran que van en serio. Sin una floritura estilística perceptible, no llamarán la atención de nadie en la calle; pero realmente disfruto la estética general.

A diferencia de muchos auriculares modernos, Project Rock evita los controles táctiles en favor de botones físicos grandes. Como le dirá cualquiera que haya navegado por los controles táctiles en el gimnasio, la tecnología táctil y el sudor no se mezclan, por lo que los botones gruesos con una buena cantidad de flexibilidad indican cuánto entiende Under Armour a su grupo demográfico objetivo.

El puerto USB-C y de 3,5 mm están cubiertos cuando no están en uso, y el chasis general cuenta con una clasificación IPX4, lo que significa que no hay que preocuparse por sudar en la caminadora mientras usa los auriculares. Todas las casillas correctas están marcadas, pero lo que realmente impresiona son las almohadillas para los oídos de Project Rock.

De todos los auriculares que he probado, ninguno se acerca al nivel de acolchado que se muestra aquí. Se sienten increíblemente cómodos, además las almohadillas para los oídos están hechas de un material transpirable alrededor de los costados que ayuda a prevenir la acumulación de sudor, pero que también se seca rápidamente si se moja.

En el esfuerzo por hacer que las almohadillas para los oídos sean cómodas, UA tampoco se ha olvidado de la higiene; estos cojines se pueden quitar y lavar a mano. En el frente del diseño, UA entiende claramente las necesidades de sus usuarios, y el único problema que tuve fue una ligera holgura alrededor de las orejas cuando estaba acostado en un banco de ejercicios.

Además de un cable USB-A-a-USB-C y un cable auxiliar para auriculares, el paquete incluye un estuche de viaje resistente. Para aquellos que tienden a arrojar los auriculares en una bolsa de deporte, la protección adicional que brinda el estuche es una ventaja.

Características

• Muchas variaciones para el modo ANC y Ambient
• Decepcionante ecualizador de ‘Project Rock’
• La batería dura años

Si se puede agradecer a Under Armour por el diseño, está claro que la experiencia en ingeniería de sonido de JBL impulsa el conjunto de características del dispositivo. La cancelación activa de ruido está presente y hay dos modos para elegir: todos los días y activo.

Todos los días es el valor predeterminado, y hace un buen trabajo al mantener a raya el ruido no deseado. No es tan potente como la cancelación de ruido de los auriculares premium de Sony, pero apaga la radio del gimnasio con un zumbido apenas audible.

El modo activo se guarda mejor para las carreras, conservando un grado de cancelación de ruido mientras permite que entren algunos sonidos ambientales para establecer la conciencia del entorno.

Me complace que JBL haya considerado actividades al aire libre; sin embargo, personalmente he tenido más uso del modo Ambient dedicado. Hay un par de opciones para elegir: Ambient Aware extrae todo el ruido externo para que se escuche junto con la música; TalkThru baja el volumen y se centra en las conversaciones cercanas para que pueda participar en una charla sin quitarse los auriculares.

Ambos modos Ambient hacen un gran trabajo al permitir que la cantidad correcta del mundo exterior llegue a mis oídos sin ahogar la música por completo, y se puede presionar el ícono del toro en el auricular derecho para alternar entre los modos ANC y Ambient rápidamente.

Todas estas configuraciones se pueden encontrar en la aplicación JBL Headphones, donde existe la posibilidad de modificar la configuración del ecualizador para obtener el sonido que mejor se adapte. Puede crear un perfil de ecualizador personalizado y elegir entre una serie de ajustes preestablecidos, el más notable es “Project Rock EQ”.

Diseñado para los gustos musicales del propio Dwayne Johnson, anticipé algo épico. La aplicación describe el ecualizador como capaz de ofrecer “calidad de sonido premium con graves ricos amplificados para ayudarlo a dominar su entrenamiento”. Puedes imaginar mi decepción cuando descubrí que Project Rock EQ era la peor opción de todos los ajustes preestablecidos.

Para asegurarme de que el problema no eran solo mis pistas favoritas, probé el ecualizador con una variedad de géneros y niveles de bajo para ver si podía encontrar un buen ajuste. Pero en todos los escenarios, el preajuste de bajo estándar superó fácilmente al Project Rock EQ.

Sin embargo, como resultado de la competencia de los otros ajustes preestablecidos que se ofrecen, esto no es un factor decisivo; pero me hace preguntarme cómo pudo haber ocurrido tal descuido. Después de todo, la participación de Dwayne Johnson está en todas partes y es la atracción principal para cualquiera que busque un par de auriculares para el gimnasio.

Fuera de la configuración del ecualizador, hay algunas características de calidad de vida que vale la pena mencionar. Al igual que los Sony WH-1000XM4, los auriculares Project Rock tienen una función de pausa automática que se activa cuando se quitan los auriculares. La función funciona bien en su mayor parte, pero hubo casos en los que no reconoció que los había quitado.

También hay un botón de función en el auricular izquierdo para convocar al asistente digital preferido en un dispositivo móvil, o alternar entre los modos Todos los días y ANC activo. Si bien aprecio que el botón esté allí, hubiera sido bueno si hubiera brindado un poco más de funcionalidad, como la capacidad de alternar varios ajustes preestablecidos de ecualización.

Una de las características más importantes de los auriculares Project Rock es la monumental duración de la batería de hasta 45 horas. Por supuesto, es difícil probar eso de una sola vez, pero en el transcurso de seis horas de reproducción continua, descubrí que la batería se redujo solo en un 10 % con una carga completa del 100 %. Cargar los auriculares al 100% desde cero lleva dos horas, lo que no es rápido según ninguna métrica, pero no es un problema con una resistencia tan larga a su disposición.

Calidad de sonido

• Gran calidad de sonido general que es un placer escuchar
• Las voces pueden perderse en canciones con graves pesados
• Las pistas que no son de entrenamiento funcionan bien

Entonces, la calidad de construcción de estos auriculares es excelente y el conjunto de funciones, a pesar de algunos problemas, es en gran medida sólido, pero ¿qué pasa con la calidad de sonido de los auriculares Project Rock? Bueno, dado su uso previsto, comencemos con una de mis pistas de entrenamiento favoritas: Godzilla de Eminem.

Cualquiera que la haya escuchado sabrá que la canción mantiene una línea de bajo fuerte en todo momento, y la energía detrás de ella se puede sentir desde el principio con los auriculares Project Rock. Diré que la separación vocal no es tan profunda como me gustaría, pero los medios se notan claramente; Pude captar claramente las teclas del piano que resuenan a través del coro.

Descubrí que este es el caso de otros himnos de gimnasio como Kickstart My Heart de Mötley Crüe, con la guitarra y la batería casi superando las voces a lo largo de la canción. Sin embargo, en todos estos casos, cambiar al ecualizador “Vocal” funcionó como una solución improvisada.

Sin embargo, esto no se aplica a las canciones en las que la mezcla ya favorece a las voces sobre cualquier otro canal. Clásicos del pop como The Great Escape de Gwen Stefani y Kokomo de The Beach Boys (tengo gustos eclécticos) se escuchan muy bien y se disfrutan al escucharlos.

Últimas ofertas

Verdict

We get little progress this year, but the Redmi Note 11 makes a lot of sense if you value screen quality and battery life over an ability to play tough games like Fortnite well.

Introduction

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 is a basic Android phone with one stand-out feature – a Full HD OLED screen. This is great for watching YouTube or Netflix in a darker room, letting the ultra-deep contrast of the tech shine.

Its solid stereo speakers are also beneficial for video. They are fairly loud and clear, not too far off the performance of Xiaomi’s phones from a level up.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11’s battery life is great too, outlasting almost all of the best phones around. Great screen, solid speakers, low-maintenance battery: that is a good combo.

Other than this, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 offers nothing too exciting. It doesn’t have 5G, the camera array is not quite as strong as that of the 4G version of the Samsung Galaxy A22. And the Qualcomm Snapdragon 680 is not a great performer.

It struggles to play games like Fortnite, and there is a slight but noticeable hit to the feel of Android in general. The Redmi Note 11 is not a pain to use but is slower to respond than the step-up Note 11 Pro 5G. Its relative lack of performance nibbles, rather than bites, but is something to bear in mind when older 4G big hitters like the Poco X3 Pro are intermittently available at a similar price.

Design and Screen

• Plain inoffensive plastic shell
• Mid-size phone, perfect if you don’t want a huge handset
• Stereo speakers

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 is an unassuming phone. As if to stress the point, Xiaomi sent me the most innocuous finish available, Graphite Grey.

There’s no dazzling effect to the back. It’s just a slightly rounded sheet of plastic with a matt top later. It feels smooth, perhaps a little cheap: clearly plastic, not glass. This simply means there’s even less of a reason not to use the bundled silicone case.

Xiaomi also makes Redmi Note 11s with lightly sparkly blue and purple/green metallic finishes, should the grey here seem just too dull for your tastes.

This is a mid-size phone with a 6.43-inch screen, making its appeal a lot wider than that of Xiaomi’s chunkier 6.67-inch performance phones from last year. At 8.1mm it’s not particularly thick, and the 179g weight is diligently moderate.

Like last year’s Note 10, Xiaomi wants to reel you in with OK pricing, so the design’s job is not to put you off in the process.

There are some more notable parts to the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 hardware, though. It has an IR blaster, which you probably won’t use but is neat nevertheless. This lets the phone act as a universal remote with the help of the Mi Remote app.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11’s speakers are also above average. There’s a driver on the phone’s bottom, another that seems to throw sound out of the top and a thin band above the screen.

In the best stereo arrays the two speakers sound roughly as powerful as each other. You don’t get that here. The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11’s bottom speaker is significantly richer than the top one, but the pair still gets you a proper stereo effect and output strong enough to punch through a good amount of ambient sound.

Speakers are a Redmi Note series strength. And while the Note 11 Pro’s are more powerful still, delivering more bass, the Note 11’s do not sit too far behind.

The fingerprint scanner lives in the power button on the side. It’s the standard place for finger pads in cheaper phones, but this one has solid ergonomics and is nippy.

You get two SIM slots and a separate microSD card slot in the SIM tray too, which should please the budget power user crowd.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11’s screen is much like last year’s Redmi Note 10’s, at least in terms of core tech.

You get a mid-size 6.43-inch AMOLED display with a 90Hz refresh rate, although my phone was set to a 60Hz refresh out of the box. Xiaomi phones from a step up offer even more rapid 120Hz refresh rates. However, 90Hz still looks smoother than 60Hz, and presumably must be less of a battery drain.

90Hz: unfashionable, but perhaps sensible?

Resolution and contrast are the real highlights of the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 display. 5G phones at this price typically have 720p screens less sharp than this 2400 x 1080 pixel one. Samsung’s 4G A22 has a comparable display, but the phone costs 15% more.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 has a strong screen, one with wide gamut colour and perfect OLED blacks. I found its colour too strong to begin with, as while the default Vivid colour profile claims to alter colour handling to suit what is displayed on-screen, interface app icons still appear super-saturated.

Don’t like it? The “Standard” colour mode brings everything back down to the more measured tones you might see in, say, an iPhone 13.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 does not appear to support HDR video, which is a shame when the actual display panel is clearly much more HDR-capable than most TVs. But HDR on a phone? It’s ultimately no great loss.

This does make you wonder exactly where you’d see the claimed “1000 nit” peak brightness, if not in HDR video. In bright sunlight the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 switches to its high brightness mode, which tops out at around 700 nits.

The phone also plays with its mid-tones in direct sunlight, lifting up the darker parts of the picture to maximise visibility. It’s a great feature to have in a cheap Android phone. However, it does not seem to engage in the camera app, which is a shame. I’ve also found the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 screen goes a bit too dim in certain indoor conditions, but just manually change the brightness level and it will stay there.

Performance

• Solid MIUI interface
• Just OK general performance
• Poor gaming performance

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11’s software looks just like that of Xiaomi’s more expensive phones. It runs Android 11 and MIUI, the company’s custom software layer.

MIUI does not do anything too bold. You can have it with or without an app drawer, and the visual design is similar to previous versions. Swipe down on the right side, you get the feature toggles for Wi-Fi, the torch and so on. You swipe from the left to see notifications. I’m not a big fan of this style, but it’s a bit less cumbersome in the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 than a larger-screen Android as reaching the left side of the display is less of a stretch for your thumb.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11’s interface looks much like that of the more expensive Xiaomis but it does not feel quite the same. It runs at a slower tempo, with a noticeable drop in responsiveness compared to the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 Pro.

App loads are a little slower, there’s sometimes a brief pause before the interface screen populates. While phone processors have developed rapidly over the years, there remains a slight performance deficit when you reach entry-level performance phones like the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11.

I don’t find this annoying as such. While this phone is slightly slower than step-up models, it is consistently slower — there aren’t glaring inconsistencies that make it seem as though you have to wade through the interface.

Do consider this if you are upgrading from an old flagship phone like, say, the OnePlus 6. This phone is highly likely to seem a straight downgrade in performance.

It is thanks to the Qualcomm Snapdragon 680, a processor much less impressive than what we’ve seen in other Xiaomi 4G phones from the last 18 months. Looking into the processor’s capabilities, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 actually hits several of its ceilings.

The Snapdragon 680 only supports displays of 1080p at up to 90Hz, there’s no support for a separate 5G modem, no Wi-Fi 6. It doesn’t support HDR video playback — the likely reason a screen that seems capable of it on the surface doesn’t have HDR.

If you wait for one of Xiaomi’s regular (and often hot) sales, you’ll be able to pick up a more powerful phone for similar money. But that only applies if you plan on buying the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 outright, of course.

Gaming is where the limits are felt the most keenly. Fortnite does not run well on the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11. It cannot remotely hold onto a solid 30fps at the default graphics settings, and has crashed on me several times — often hanging before or during the dropship part at the start of a game.

The phone is not officially supported by Fortnite publisher Epic at present, and stability may improve in the future, as the Snapdragon 680 processor is used in several notable phones including the Realme 9i and Samsung Galaxy A23. It still won’t run particularly well even after optimisations, though. The limited 4GB RAM in my test phone likely does not help.

ARK: Survival Evolved runs poorly when maxed out, and even at Medium graphics there are clear frame rate drops as you run through the environment.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 scores 444 points in 3DMark’s Wild Life benchmark, a dismal score and only half that of the similarly priced Oppo A54 5G. That phone has the Snapdragon 480 5G, a chipset that sounds less powerful than the Redmi’s Snapdragon 680, but is not.

This phone is also slower than its predecessor: Qualcomm’s naming convention strikes again. The old Redmi Note 10’s Snapdragon 678 is a little more powerful than this phones’ Snapdragon 680, which you would never guess.

In better news, the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 never seems to get hot — perhaps not too surprising given the phone’s power. That said, 3D Mark’s Wild Life stress test shows the phone goes into a throttled mode after 10 minutes at full pelt, dipping to 50-60% of its peak performance.

Camera

• Fairly weak HDR
• Poor low-light photo
• Slightly, but not glaringly, slow to shoot

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 has four rear cameras. You get a 50-megapixel main camera, an 8MP ultra-wide, a 2MP macro and a 2MP depth camera.

Those last two are typical filler cameras. Close-up macro images are pretty bad and fall apart when you view them on a display larger than the phone’s own screen.

The Xiaomi Redmi Note 11’s main camera uses a Samsung sensor that, in typical Samsung fashion, takes a currently trendy resolution (50MP) and brings it down to earth by shoehorning it into fairly low-end hardware. This is a small 1/2.76-inch sensor, leading to sensor pixels that measure just 0.64 microns. These things are tiny.

However, for the most part I’m reasonably happy with the results. Some of the issues I had with the step-up Redmi Note 11 Pro 5G camera are here too, but they stick out less in a sub-£200 phone.

Shoot in good lighting and the Xiaomi Redmi Note 11 typically puts out photos with a warm…