5 of the best British designs
With our Best of British edition in the shops, we look at some of the greatest designs and tech to come out of the UK
5 of the best British designs – Charge Plug Prestige
£630, evanscycles.com
Charge’s Plug Prestige may have a dodgy name, but this sexy singlespeeder makes for a fantastic ride. The solid, simple design will last for years and you can’t get more classic than the stitched leather seat.
Use a fixed gear and take off the Tektro brakes for a smooth, perfect ride. Biking brilliance at a wallet-friendly price.
5 of the best British designs – Routemaster Bus
£315,000, tfl.gov.uk
Okay, it isn’t something you can go out and buy – but the new “Boris bus” has all the hallmarks of a British design classic. The new Routemaster – which finally hit the streets of London this week – is a futuristic update on the classic Routemaster design, with the traditional hop on, hop off rear platform.
Modern updates include diesel-electric hybrid tech and a “T-Loop” system that brings announcements to hearing aids. The sweeping windows are pretty cool too.
5 of the best British designs – Bowers & Wilkins Nautilus
£55,000, bowers-wilkins.co.uk
B&W’s audio cabinets are just stunning. With zero distortion, these beauties are used at Abbey Road studios, possibly the best stamp of audio-approval available.
With Kevlar speaker cones and an diamond tweeters, the Nautilus is as close to perfection as speakers can be. B&W will even colour-match them for you.
5 of the best British designs – Raspberry Pi
£22, raspberrypi.org
Designed as an educational device, the Raspberry Pi has fast-become one of the hottest pieces of tech this year. It’s small but mighty, packing the power of a Pentium 4 into a credit card-sized unit.
The Raspberry Pi includes 256MB RAM, USB, LAN and HDMI ports and an SD card slot. Running Linux, it can be used for word-processing, software-writing or even server-hosting. Not bad for the cost of a takeaway.
5 of the best British designs – Dyson DC38 Multifloor
£300, tesco.com
It’s hard to get excited about a vacuum cleaner, but Dyson’s DC38 makes a serious go of it. The dinky cylinder and ball-based manoeuvring makes cleaning a tiny flat hassle-free.
Dyson’s DualCyclone tech is serious stuff, packing 100,000g of centrifugal force. Bad news for dust and escaped hamsters, but good news for messy sods like us.
For more on the best of British design and technology, check out the April issue of Stuff magazine, out now.
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Dan Grabham
Editor-in-Chief 
