smack416

A level up from the HomePod mini would be welcome.

After using a number of original HomePods and HomePods mini alone and in stereo, the minis are a pale comparison to the original HomePod. I think the price difference was reasonable given the more fulsome sound.

Something that gets closer to the original HomePod for $99 more than the mini would be great and maybe a better consumer price point than the original Homepod. I otherwise wouldn't buy or recommend another Homepod mini and will be crestfallen if something happens to my living room HomePods and there's no reasonably close equivalent to replace them.

The trouble with basically any other monitor other than the 27" LG Ultrafine is the PPI. This BenQ is not retina resolution, nor is it well suited to MacOS as a non-retina display (reference: https://bjango.com/articles/macexternaldisplays/).

With the 27" Ultrafine, you're sacrificing a few inches of screen largeness for a noticeable amount of clarity (218PPI vs 138PPI on the BenQ), many more pixels (5120 x 2880 vs 3840 x 2160 on the BenQ), and the LG costs you just $100 more. To me, there's no contest given the value, unless extreme response time is a deal breaker for you.

The knock on the LG monitors is that they are not great in build quality, but the screens are as good as it gets. Simply put: the 27" LG Ultrafine monitor is the only option available today if you're looking for the clarity of a retina screen, and will be the only economical option when Apple releases their pro display. At least until a competitor else releases a +200 PPI monitor. In the meantime, this BenQ monitor doesn't compare.

I'd like to point out that I've had no issue playing the game on my iPad mini 4. I know the app store says you need to play it on a new iPad, but the fact of the matter is: the game is slow on any iPad once you get into the latter stages where the map is fully uncovered, in use, and it's processing all the moves by each of the sims.

I initially bought Civ 2 to play on the latest model iPad Pro but was surprised to find that it works just fine on the mini. I find it quite a bit more enjoyable to play casually on the mini than have to get comfortable with the size of the 12.9" Pro when I'm just lounging around. The only trick is to make sure you don't go with a map larger than "Small", which is still plenty big.

Missing December allowed Amazon the opening to have this buyer to try out an Echo Plus, only to hear first-hand how completely awful the audio is and confirm how limited the functionality is outside of music. i returned my almost unused Alexa this week. Can't wait for HomePod.