giffgaff plans after the £14 unlimited deal: every price on every tab, and why two cheap contract tiers are smaller than the label says.
September 18, 2026Comments are off for this post.
giffgaff Plans 2026: Every Price, and the £25 Unlimited
September 12, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Best budget turntables UK: seven decks under £300
TurntablesLast updated: 13 October 2026
By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance
This article contains affiliate or referral links. If you click through and sign up I may earn a commission or referral bonus at no extra cost to you. It does not affect my editorial view.
The seven decks worth buying under £300
The budget turntables UK shops actually stock start at £129 and, for my money, stop at £300. Above that line the money goes into the plinth, the platter and the arm, which is a different argument. Below it, the money buys convenience, so the only question that matters is which conveniences are worth having. So I checked every price on 4 September 2026, again on 11 September and most recently on 13 October and read every maker's own specification. Then I wrote down what each deck gives up to hit its number.
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September 10, 2026Comments are off for this post.
iPhone 18 Pro UK Price: Every Tier and Date
Apple's UK prices are in. The iPhone 18 Pro starts at £1,199, the Pro Max at £1,299, and the foldable iPhone Duo at £1,999. Every tier and both launch dates.
September 9, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Apple Surprise and Shine Event: Everything Announced
Everything Apple announced at the Surprise and Shine event, with UK prices and dates, plus an honest look at how close the rumours got.
September 7, 2026Comments are off for this post.
iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone Duo: What to Expect
Last updated: 9 September 2026iPhone 18 Pro
By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance
Nobody outside Apple knows whether a phone called the iPhone 18 Pro exists. What Apple has confirmed is a date. Wednesday 9 September, 6pm UK time, at an event it is calling Surprise and shine. Everything else you have read this week, including the name in that first sentence, is reporting rather than fact, so I have kept the two apart all the way down this page.
This article contains affiliate or referral links. If you click through and sign up I may earn a commission or referral bonus at no extra cost to you. It does not affect my editorial view.
This is not financial or buying advice. Prices and launch dates change, and most of the product detail below is unconfirmed reporting, so check Apple's own pages before you spend anything.
Thinking of buying the outgoing model instead?
My Back Market page carries the current discount code, the minimum spend and what the warranty actually covers.
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Below: what Apple has actually said, why the first keynote of the Ternus era is the more interesting story, and the price problem Apple warned everyone about back in June.
Want the full picture now the phones are out? My iPhone guides hub collects the lot, from the UK prices to the review and the refurbished alternatives.
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June 7, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Honest Mobile vs Smarty: Which SIM Wins in 2026?
Honest Mobile vs Smarty compared for 2026: prices, the Three network, roaming, perks and referral offers, so UK buyers pick the right SIM-only deal.
May 23, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Best Father’s Day Tech Gifts UK 2026: The Beyond-Obvious Edit
Father's Day Tech Gifts2026 Edit
The tech gifts he doesn't know he wants yet.
Last updated: 23 May 2026
By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance
Father's Day tech gifts tend to arrive in two flavours: the painfully obvious and the quietly disappointing. After all, your dad already owns an iPhone, a pair of AirPods, and a smart speaker he shouts at across the kitchen. So this year, skip every one of those. Instead, this edit of Father's Day tech gifts is for the dad who has the obvious stuff already, and who secretly wants the interesting stuff he has not discovered yet.
Father's Day 2026 falls on Sunday 21 June, which gives you roughly a month to order. Moreover, every pick below sits in that sweet spot between "I did not know this existed" and "I cannot believe I lived without it." Some we own. Some we have tested. Some we have researched obsessively and quietly added to our own wish lists. All of them passed the same test: is it well designed, does it solve a real problem, and would we be genuinely excited to unwrap it?
Some links in this guide are affiliate or referral links. This costs you nothing extra and helps support the site.
Best under £100AncestryDNA Kit£79
Best under £150Fairphone Fairbuds£129
Best splurgereMarkable Paper Pro£699
Most unexpectedBird Buddy Pro£199
For the audiophile dadTeenage Engineering OB-4around £599
For the tinkering dadBambu Lab A1 Minifrom £149
May 17, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Best Running Watches UK 2026: Tested, Strava-Verified Picks
Last updated: Sunday 17 May 2026
By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance
Affiliate disclosure: CoolCuration is reader-supported. When you buy through links on this page we may earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you. We only recommend products we'd genuinely use ourselves.
Best running watches UK 2026: tested, Strava-verified picks
The best running watches UK buyers can buy in 2026 are not the most expensive ones. After a year of parkruns, half marathons and one deeply regrettable ultramarathon between us, our verdict is unambiguous. The Garmin Forerunner 265 remains the right watch for most runners, the COROS PACE 3 still humiliates everything near its price, and the Apple Watch Ultra 3 is finally credible for iPhone owners who actually train. Everything else is either better than that trio (and considerably pricier) or, more often, worse.
Why this matters: the running watch market has a dirty secret. The best watch for 90% of runners costs about £250. Spend more and you mostly pay for maps, sapphire glass and longer battery for ultras. Spend less and GPS accuracy collapses, which is the one thing a running watch cannot afford to get wrong. A watch that tells you your 5K was 4.8K is worse than useless. Below is our curated shortlist for UK runners in 2026, organised by need rather than brand. Every pick syncs with Strava natively and automatically. If a watch can't talk to Strava, it doesn't exist to us.
Between us we've run in Garmin, Apple Watch and COROS. We've done parkruns, half marathons and one deeply regrettable ultramarathon. The Garmin won, every time.
Best overall
Garmin Forerunner 265
From £329. The right watch for most runners.Best value
COROS PACE 3
From £219. A silly amount of watch for the money.Best budget
Amazfit Active 2
From £99. Mapping at this price is unheard of.Best for trails
Garmin Fenix 8
From £849. Routable maps. Weeks of battery.Best smartwatch for runners
Apple Watch Ultra 3
From £719. iPhone only, but finally honest.Best battery for ultras
Garmin Enduro 3
From £699. 90 hours of multi-band GPS.Best for recovery data
Polar Vantage V3
From £400. Recovery science nobody else matches.
May 15, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Best Home Printer UK 2026: Laser Beats Ink, Every Time
Last updated: 15 May 2026
By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance
Affiliate disclosure: this post contains affiliate links. If you buy through them we earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only recommend kit we would put on our own desks.
Printers are the one piece of tech that has somehow got worse over the past 20 years. They jam, they run out of ink the moment you need them, and they cost more per millilitre than vintage champagne. So when we set out to find the best home printer UK buyers can actually live with in 2026, we started from a position of mild rage and worked outwards.
Here is the short version. For most homes the best home printer UK answer is a small Brother mono laser. It is boring, reliable, cheap to run, and the toner never dries out. If you genuinely need colour at home, skip ink cartridges entirely and buy a refillable ink tank such as an Epson EcoTank or a Canon PIXMA MegaTank. That is the whole guide in two sentences. The rest is the working.
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May 14, 2026Comments are off for this post.
Best Travel Accessories UK 2026: The Editor’s Edit
Last updated: 14 May 2026
By Stiv · Design, technology and personal finance
This post contains affiliate and referral links. We may earn a commission if you buy through them, at no extra cost to you. Everything here is independently chosen.
The best travel accessories UK 2026 has to offer are not the loudest ones. They are the quiet objects that earn their square inch of a carry-on: a Danish raincoat that folds to the size of a paperback, an Aarhus-engineered adapter that survives a flickering hotel socket, a 37Wh power bank that walks through a Heathrow gate audit without a raised eyebrow. This is the CoolCuration edit, written for people who travel often, pack light, and would rather buy once than buy twice. Eighteen pieces, all UK-priced, all in stock as of this morning.
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