BTTR Roundup #53: Productivity booster

This week has felt a little overwhelming. We're starting to come into new product season, where tech companies are dropping new product announcements every time you turn around.

There's also been some big announcements this week, like OpenAI releasing GPT-5, NBN and Amazon pairing up for LEO satellite internet next year and the Productivity Commission (PC)'s interim report that we should make copyright laws a bit looser for AI companies.

I dive into that topic a bit more for paid subscribers below, but my first thought is just how productive the PC thinks Australia will be when unemployment inevitably skyrockets because AI has stolen all our jobs.

While I'm discussing productivity though – this week I published my review of the espresso Displays 15 Pro portable monitor. Now that's a way to boost productivity! Here's my wild suggestion: just give every Australian a second screen to work from and forget about that AI rubbish, and everything will be fine.

Until next week

–Nick

This week's new tech news

• I need to get a projector. Actually, I probably need a new house big enough to really take advantage of a projector first, then I need to get a projector. Epson has just launched a new 4K model, the EH-LS9000B, and it delivers screen sizes up to 300 inches in 4K, with a 32-bit image processor handling the picture's colour, brightness and contrast. With a 2,500,000:1 contrast ratio, 10-bit HDR and a 20,000 hour solid state laser light source, it promises a pretty awesome picture. RRP is $7,299, and it's available now. [Epson]
• Meanwhile, LG is launching its smallest ultra short-throw projector in Australia, the Cinebeam S. It can deliver screen sizes from 40 inches to 100 inches, depending on how far from the wall you place it, with picture quality in 4K and inbuilt Atmos speakers (though let's be honest, those speakers aren't going to really do much for you). It will offer LG's WebOS UI and sell for $2,499 RRP. [LG]
• I'm not a big karaoke guy. But I know that people who love it really love it. And for those people, the new Ikarao smart karaoke machines are going to be very exciting products. There are four new models: The Break X1, Break X2 and the Shell S3 and Shell S4. [Ikarao]
  • The Break models and the Shell S3 all have a built-in FHD touchscreen that rotates 180º, powered by Android 13 , bass boosted stereo and 2.2 channel audio, adjustable LED lighting and dual wireless microphones. If the tablet isn't big enough, you can plug in the speaker to your TV via HDMI to sing to the big screen, while the speakers have a pre-installed 6-month subscription to Karafun Premium, with access to 60,000 songs. You can also connect it to Spotify and YouTube.
  • All models are available now and pricing looks like this: Break X1 $1,399 | Break X2 $999 | Shell S3 $699 | Shell S2 $599 | Shell S3 $399
• Beko is set to launch a range of small appliances this month. We're going to see four new coffee machines (two automatic and two manual), plus a pair of air fryers in the new lineup, including a single-drawer 7.6-litre model and a 3-in-1 dual-drawer model. All the new products will be available through Amazon. [via Appliance Retailer]
• Ghost launched its latest platform update this week, and so far I really like it! The two big additions are the inclusion of privacy-friendly analytics, so you no longer have to use Google Analytics (or any paid alternative, really), as well as integration into the fediverse. The second one I think probably still needs a bit more work, particularly given the UI to share articles is still built exclusively around Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. But overall it's a good improvement. Pretty sure if you use this link you can get a 10% discount too. [Ghost]
• NBN Co has announced it's partnering with Amazon to deliver better internet for rural and remote parts of Australia, using Amazon's Project Kuiper Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites. The service is expected to launch in the middle of 2026, but right now there's no indication of what speed tiers and pricing we can expect. Amazon is still launching the satellites – currently there are 78 in orbit, but the goal is to include more than 3,200. When it's fully rolled out, the NBN service will replace the Sky Muster satellite service remote Aussies have used since 2015. [Amazon]
• Surprising nobody, dodgy AI company Perplexity is using undeclared crawlers that ignore your robots.txt files instructions to scrape your content, according to Cloudflare. Perplexity disputes the claim, but do you really trust a company whose entire technology stack is built on stolen content? I don't. It's a good reminder that Robots.txt isn't a directive though, it's a guideline [Cloudflare]
• ChatGPT has just launched its latest model: GPT-5. Are you excited? Fair enough... It's rolling out to everyone, and will replace several older models as the company tries to streamline its UI. Among the reported "improvements" are the ability to set personalities, the ability to connect to your Google calendar for scheduling and better coding and writing skills. Apparently it will be less likely to hallucinate, which can only be a good thing. But from my (very) early experiments, it still likes to ignore instructions and make stuff up. [OpenAI]

This week's reviews

Espresso Displays 15 Pro review: 4King brilliant

4K resolution, 550 nits of brightness, 1.07 billion colours, all from a portable monitor powered by a single USB-C cable: The espresso 15 Pro is an impressive productivity partner.

BTTR ReviewsNick Broughall

New products at BTTR HQ this week