I got myself the Surface Headphones, as I probably have to return the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700 at some point and the Surface Headphones were a steal... and should I get to keep the Bose my mother will get the Microsoft ones. Sound is... meh? Way too much bass, too muffled. The Bose are FAR more balanced. Thankfully the equalizer (only accessible through a Windows PC... what a surprise) is quite flexible. You can do a lot to fix the sound, though I rather have it be good right out of the box. Only the stage seems better on the Surface Headphones. Noise cancelling is also not as good, or say, as consistent as the Bose (the Bose don't care from what direction noises come from... the Surface change depending on how I turn my head). There's also more background noise (as in white noise). Usability takes a hit to the Bose, as does comfort. Build quality feels better on Bose too, though the Surface are by no means bad. Now, for the price I paid (129 Euro) the Surface Headphones are really good. You won't get this quality elsewhere. But Microsoft initially wanted to price it against the Sony WH-1000XM3 and the Bose Noise Cancelling Headphones 700, and then you certainly get better. Especially the Bose are a gem, as they are really good at everything. The Sonys may be a little better in one or two areas, but a lot worse in other areas.
The Herman Miller is good for me. I feel a lot better now.
The Xiaomi phone arrived, and I love it. The screen is OLED, so yeah, it's good. And Xiaomi is good at calibrating their screens, it even has something like Apples True Tone that adjusts the color temperature according to the surroundings. On a phone that's like 400 Euro. Madness. Performance is good, though there are faster phones out there. But in day to day use it doesn't feel slow or sluggish, so yeah. And then there's the camera(s): I'd almost say the background blurs on the main camera like a typical kit lens set to wide angle would. Maybe more. The image quality is good, especially when using Gcam instead of the stock camera (though it depends, sometimes that is better too). Having 4 different focal lengths and decent-ish cameras behind them is a neat trick. In particular the ultra wide angle found plenty of use for shots I couldn't get otherwise, images look pleasant though perhaps a bit too processed. Sadly (?) you can't get 108 MP raw files, they get binned down to 27 MP first. Perhaps for the better. DSLRs and mirrorless cameras better innovate. It looks like Samsung is moving to 1 inch sensors in the foreseable future... all that's missing is a lens mount.
I also got myself a Lenovo Smart Display 8". At 59 Euro new (original asking price was something like 250?) I thought, yeah, why not. At first I wanted a tablet to serve me as TV screen when I don't want to on the big TV in the room (it's almost 10 years old now, and I hope it gets a lot older than that! I'm still having trouble finding anything that has better image quality). But 59 Euro... anyway, it does that well, though I have to control it through my phone. When it isn't a TV on my desk it serves as picture frame, where it displays my favorite photos from last year. The screen is pretty decent, though I wish it could adjust the color temperature to the surroundings. I'd say short of something like a Meural this is the best photo frame you can get (unless you're turning a Samsung tablet with OLED screen into a photoframe, perhaps). By far better than dedicated and similarly priced frames that tend to have terrible screens. The Google Assistant functions are also quite nice, I've connected it to my light bulbs, which means at least the Wi-Fi enabled Xiaomi bulbs can be controlled with voice commands. No more getting up to switch them on, change brightness or color. Nice. Now I need more lights.
The Denons also have arrived... the Home 250 a while ago, the Home 350 yesterday. Initially I made the mistake of placing them on my desk, nearby. Either the desk vibrates too much (yeah probably) or I was too close to them (that too)... Especially the 250 is pretty terrible on the desk. But move it further back and things change completely. Used as bookshelf speakers, ideally on a speaker stand (I put the 250 on my bigger tripod and it works well, as long as you're careful about the screw length!) it works really well. The sound is nicely balanced, detailed... I'd say two of them can act as a decent stereo system, if you don't overdo it in terms of volume (either speaker can get loud, but sound suffers at some point). And while the 250 at times can feel a bit lacking, the 350 doesn't. Hopefully I can get my hands on the B&W Formation Duo at some point, as well as the Devialet Phantom (for more than 15 minutes, at least). I'd love to place the Home 350 on my tripod, but at nearly 7 kg I'm afraid that could be a bit much... and I need to use a tripod head (thankfully I have one that's as minimal as they get, so that part shouldn't have much trouble). Right now it sits on top of my regular speaker.