PlayStation and Xboxes are always going to be around, however low cost chips and high quality mobile operating systems have resulted in a new sort of gaming machine on the horizon – Android Consoles.

Android’s versatility and cheap and powerful chips from the likes of NVIDIA mean that a raft of Android consoles has arrived. These Android gaming consoles offer gaming thrills on your TV in a small footprint for a fraction of the price of a console and many do more than play games. 

Amazon Fire TV

Take the Amazon Fire TV for instance, the latest foray into technology from the former book retailer. As well as offering a whole host of apps for watching media, streaming TV and turning your TV into essentially a computer with voice control. It also comes with a gaming pad and allows you to play a variety of Android games in your living room. Even though games are partially limited, it offers a lot of bang for its buck and showcases just some of the amazing things these low cost machines can do.

Ouya

In a lot of ways the daddy of Android gaming consoles, the Ouya is priced around the £99 mark. Having begun life on Kickstarter as a crowdfunding project the little cube was hailed as a revolutionary device. With its own store populated by the likes of Final Fantasy III, as well as Android classics such as Dead Trigger. 

However, like the Amazon Fire TV it’s somewhat limited and developers need to create games specifically for it as a platform – essentially they need to re-tool the controller. This means that people end up having to buy the same game separately for it and a mobile device. However, it’s a great machine and a new, improved version is in the works – let’s hope it irons out the problem of having to purchase two version of the same game and also makes the developers’ job easier. 

GameStick

The size of a USB stick, the GameStick is another Kickstarter winner and takes up only a tiny increment of space. It’s attractive, easy to bring to a friend’s house and comes with an attractive, well build joypad. However, like the Ouya there are developer issues and a lack of games. That said it shows plenty of promise. 

M.O.J.O.

The Mojo is everything we’d want in this sort of a console aside from one think – it’s pretty expensive. Made by Mad Catz who are famed for their controllers, it offers expandable memory, comes with a super powerful Tegra 4 CPU and offers full Google Play support so you can play all your mobile games on it. It seems like it’s the complete package, the only issue is that it’s twice as expensive as most of the other devices here. 

Android consoles are in their infancy in a way, however each iteration we see is better and better and they do show a lot of promise. For the price and for what they offer they’re definitely value for money and well worth a look for casual gamers. 

*The information in this blog is designed to provide helpful information on the subjects discussed. Please seek a professional for expert advice as we can not be held responsible for any damages or negative consequences upon following this information.

In Finland, they have a saying “there’s more than one way to roast a reindeer.” Although reindeer meat isn’t a common dish away from the northerly-most Arctic communities, it’s an apt little phrase for the modern kitchen, wherever you happen to be.

Take anything you wish to roast, and you are spoilt for choice with regards to how to do it these days. There are so many different cooking appliances out there.

One such example is the steam oven. Most of us will have heard of steamers - those tall contraptions that are designed to help you stop boiling your Sunday vegetables to a grey mush - but a steam oven? How does that work?

Before anyone gets any elaborate visions of cooking machines powered by steam engines, steam ovens do, in fact, work in a very similar way to an old-fashioned steamer, using the heat from steam to do the cooking. The main difference is capacity - steam ovens come in the size and shape of a standard oven, which means you can fit a lot more into them.

More often or not, you will find a steam oven setting as one of several options as part of a multi-function unit, along with conventional and convection functions.

Cooking on steam

But what is the difference between all three, and how does the steam part work? A standard oven cooks by making the air trapped inside the unit hot. This is fine, but conventional ovens do not produce consistent heat throughout. Hot air naturally rises, and the closer you get to the heat source, the hotter it gets. This makes it easy to burn some things while other food in the same oven is still undercooked.

Convection ovens solve this with the addition of a simple fan - hence the term ‘fan-assisted’ - which circulates the hot air more evenly around the unit. Again, this is great, it speeds up cooking times and gives a nice consistent temperature which helps to produce better quality roasts and baked goods. But the downside is that all that hot air circulating can easily dry out your food.

That is where steam comes into its own. By adding a container or reservoir of water to the oven, when it heats up, it fills with steam instead of hot air.

Great, I hear you say - but who needs to steam two or three shelves full of vegetables at a time? Well that is where the word needs to get out about steam cooking. It is far, far more versatile than most people think. Put simply, anything you can cook in a conventional oven, you can also cook using steam. All you are doing is switching the cooking medium from hot air to hot water vapour. And this also has several advantages.

Steam carries heat more efficiently than air, which means a steam oven delivers a more consistent temperature without the need for a fan and also cooks faster. Steam also avoids the risk of your food drying out, which also prevents burning. Another advantage is that it is thought the moisture helps to lock-in more nutrients, making steam cooking healthier - plus, you don’t have to douse food in fat like you do with a traditional roast.

Of course, there are times when we all want a little extra crunch - roast potatoes with the outsides crisped to perfection in hot oil, a roast joint with crackling - which is why it is common to see steam ovens available in combination varieties. Why not pack as many options as possible into a single unit?

Whichever type of oven you opt for, don’t forget to guard against any mishaps with Row.co.uk’s fantastic value appliance insurance, starting at just £1.49 a month!

*The information in this blog is designed to provide helpful information on the subjects discussed. Please seek a professional for expert advice as we can not be held responsible for any damages or negative consequences upon following this information.