Zune HD: Formidable Competition, But Loses Big On The Apps Department
Microsoft’s return to the portable media player scene carried a little added heft this time around, offering more formidable competition to the iPod’s dominance. Called the Zune HD, the new device goes directly after the iPod Touch, managing to shine brilliantly in the process.
Clad in a silver and black industrial design, it’s an excellent music player with an undeniable wow factor. Beyond the snazzy looks, however, lies a hardware set that can only be described as souped up: a 3.3-inch AMOLED screen, HD radio tuner and HD video out.
The display, which manages a 480 x 272 resolution and a 16:9 aspect ratio, is easily the best screen available on any PMP in the market. Images appear bright, with vivid colors. Multi-touch interface is responsive and accurate, making navigation and other onscreen operations easy.
Don’t let the name confuse you, the Zune HD doesn’t show HD video. It can process 720p fast enough to show it in downscaled form right on the OLED screen or output it to a connected HDTV for full resolution. You’ll need to pay for the AV dock separately, though, which prices itself at a rather expensive $90.
The HD radio tuner, along with a classic FM one, lets you listen to a whole range of available broadcasts in your area. Connected to the AV dock, it can output the received programming, as well. Music playback is excellent (along with a superb music player), capably rivaling the best PMP audio in the market today (which, in my opinion, is a toss up between the Sony Walkman X and the iPod Touch).
Unfortunately, the Zune HD falls miserably where the iPod Touch shines: software. Sure, the onboard browser is good, using a modified IE for Windows Mobile 6.5 that’s configured to support the full multi-touch experience, allowing such gestures as scrolling, pinching and double tapping into the mix. Zune Marketplace and Xbox Live are amazing sources for discovering new content/
That’s where the goodness ends, though (at least, until Microsoft makes another play). While the company has set up an application storefront for the Zune HD, it’s a closed platform. That means all new software that’s turning up for download will all either come from Microsoft or its partners, making the place a barren desert compared to the App Store, which is more than likely to reach an inventory of over 100,000 apps within the next six months or so.
The choice is actually pretty simple. If you want a great player with an awesome OLED screen at a cheaper price ($290 for the 32GB version), the Zune HD is it. Want the extensibility of tons of apps and plenty of high-profile games to go along with your media playback? Say hello to Apple.
Lenovo T400s Touchscreen: Great Business Laptop Gets A Touchscreen
The Lenovo Thinkpad T400s was an excellent slim laptop when it first came out early in the year. None of that brilliant quality went away when Lenovo decided to release an updated version, which touts a full-featured touchscreen display to the mix.
Why add touch capabilities on a laptop LCD? I’m not sure either, since the T400s doesn’t fold down like a convertible notebook, eliminating the possibility of using it as a modified tablet of sorts. That’s too bad, since the multi-touch features and the installed SimpleTap software would have made for an excellent tablet PC.
Like many of Lenovo’s machines, the new T400s comes with solid build quality to go with all that premium hardware. It uses the same carbon-fiber “roll cage” skeleton, refined keyboard and large touchpad that makes it a pleasing computer to use.
Specs are standard for a mobile business machine. Details include a 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo SP9600, GMA 4500M integrated graphics, 4GB of DDR2 RAM and a 128GB SSD. The 14.1-inch display offers a 1,440×900 native resolution, great image quality and a matte finish.
Props need to be given to the multi-touch capability, which works very well with the touch-friendly Windows 7 and Lenovo’s own SimpleTap interface. However, as a $400 markup over a regular T400s, it’s not that easy of a purchase, despite being particularly attractive.
The Lenovo Thinkpad T400s notebook’s overall performance is excellent. Everything is quick and responsive, especially when compared to other business laptops. Battery should last you a good 5 hours for regular use and a little over 3 hours of non-stop video playback. At a $2,000 price tag, it’s a tad expensive, but should be worth every penny.
iPod Nano With Video – Flip Killer?
When the fifth-generation iPod Nano debuted to the world, the audience had one thing in mind: Flip Killer. Of course, simply adding a camcorder feature to a music player doesn’t immediately endow it with the honor.
Physically, the player looks about the same. The metallic paint job looks flashier than previous Nanos and it’s rather appealing. Some changes are easily apparent in the Nano’s hardware, though. The screen has grown a bit (from 2 inches to 2.2 inches) and it has received a few pleasant additions, including a pedometer, an FM tuner, a voice recorder, speakers and, of course, the video camera.
The video camera is placed in an insanely awkward manner, right on the lower right corner. I’m not digging the location, as it’s prone to being touched regularly (dirtying up the lens in the process). Capture quality is decent enough at VGA resolution and 30 fps. However, with neither autofocus, optical zoom or that good of an image stabilization module, video isn’t up to par with the more popular VGA pocket camcorders on the market. While the color is adequately managed, the overall footages are a little grainy and moving subjects are a bit jarring. Recorded audio is accurate, but lacks detail.
Playing back the recording on the Nano is great, as the screen is bright and sharp, with excellent color. Audio playback over the integrated speakers is pretty bad, but it still manages the same great sound over a good pair of headphones. The pedometer is great, taking accurate measurements for casual fitness requirements. It’s no pro athlete fare, but it will do.
Overall, the new iPod Nano is a joke when referred to as a Flip Killer. Sure, it can manage video, but it doesn’t do it any better the existing crop of pocket camcorders out there. It’s a nice extra feature, but no one’s going to be buying an iPod Nano for that.
The iPhone Is Getting A Physical Keyboard…Sort Of
The headline is a tad misleading. Everyody’s favorite handset isn’t getting an actual keyboard as part of its hardware suite. Instead, it’s getting the Blackberry treatment with an accessory iPhone case (of sorts) that makes the thing look like one of RIM’s units with a front-mounted QWERTY keypad. And it’s inexplicably called the iTwinge.
One of my long-awaited features for the iPhone has been an actual keyboard that I can either plug in or connect to via Bluetooth. Heck, I’ll give up carrying my netbook around when one of those come out. I won’t get that here. Instead, we get a dock with a three-row QWERTY panel that lets you type on the iPhone using a physical keypad.
The thing, in all honesty, looks ridiculous. Even worse, the mechanics by which it functions look equally simple, which makes it hilarious that Mobile Mechatronics (the company behind the iTwinge) is being cagey about its inner working. From what we can tell, it simply absorbs the physical key presses and passes it along to a capacitive nodule directly touching the screen – you touch a letter, it touches the same.
iTwinge is supposed to work with all iPhone 3G and 3GS models, with a release slated for November 19. I would have guessed it’s a joke peripheral, but they’re taking actual orders beginning last Wednesday, so I don’t know.
Major failure, if I do say so myself.
iPod Touch 3G Review: OpenGL ES 2.0, Faster Performance
While the third generation of the iPod Touch disappointed a good lot of folks when it came out without a camera module (like everyone was expecting), it should appease the complaints with what Apple ended up packing it with. Simply put, the iPod Touch 3G is now a full-fledged gaming console, in addition to its already powerful range of features.
So why was the camera left out? According to Steve Jobs, the decision was made to keep the cost of the device on par with both the PSP and the DS, the two most prevalent current-gen handheld gaming consoles today. With the wealth of top games (including ones from notable publishers like EA and Gameloft) now available from the App Store, the Touch 3G has received the corresponding hardware upgrade necessary to put it on par with those machines.
Nothing was changed with the device from the outside, as it sports the same 110 x 62 x 8.5 mm dimensions, 115 grams of weight and 3.5-inch touchscreen. Inside, however, the third-generation Touch now comes in 32GB and 64GB models, with full support for OpenGL ES 2.0, allowing it to process high-end 3D graphics. Performance is noticeably faster, with snappier performance on both locally-executing apps, as well as over the Wi-Fi connection.
At the current state of App Store games, the OpenGL ES 2.0 support is only really necessary for a handful of games (best guess is you can count them on two hands). As such, going for a cheaper older model doesn’t sound too bad for now. That will probably change in a year or so. For now, the extra storage is really the only defining characteristic, but should prove very necessary if you like to have tons of media files on tap.
Canon Vixia HSF11 Review: Near-Perfect HD Recordings, Super Compact Size, Needs More Buttons
Canon’s latest gadget-envy camcorder is out and it’s called the Vixia HSF11. Combining stylish looks with high-quality video recordings, it manages exceptionally vivid moving images, but not without a few caveats.
How a camcorder so small can pack so much power is really surprising. But it does. With a 1/2.6-inch CMOS sensor, optical stabilization, digital image processing, 10X zoom and an excellent hardware set, everything we shot looked life-like and sharp, even under poor lighting. In fact, the only time we saw some niggling issues was when shooting far-off (maximum optical zoom) into the distance without a tripod. It even manages exceptional stills, in case you ever use a camcorder for shooting photos.
When it comes capture quality, we encountered no real problems with the HSF11. The controls, however, are a mixed bag. Sure, the knurled manual focus is clever, but a lot of functions that are easily accessible via physical buttons in other camcorders got shafted because of the size. Instead of reaching over and pressing, you’ll have to dig through menus to access them. The menu’s control knob was pretty snazzy, but, again, I’d rather press a button for most of those functionalities.
At a $1,400 price tag, the Canon Vixia HSF11 isn’t cheap. But it’s high-quality, it’s pretty and it almost fits into my front pocket. That sounds good enough for me.
AMD-Powered Gateway LT3013u Netbook Offers Top-End Netbook Performance, Low Price
If you’ve been disappointed with the lack of alternatively-configured netbooks in the market, you might want to haul your act over to the Gateway LT3013u, which brings a somewhat refreshing change of specs into the netbook scene. Powered by a 1.2GHz AMD Athlon 64 L110 at the helm, we finally have something different to compare the Atom-packing netbooks to.
The 11-inch LCD is the first big difference here, offering a little more screen real estate than the standard 10.1-inches we see in many netbooks today. While some higher-end netbooks do cross over into this size, they usually do it with a considerable spike in price – not this unit, though.
Apart from the processor, the LT3013u features AMD RS690E chipset, ATI Radeon X1270 graphics, 2GB DDR2 RAM and a 250GB HDD. On a netbook with an N280 Atom processor, we’d expect a machine with these specs to clear $500. Fortunately, this AMD-powered beauty doesn’t.
In terms of looks, it’s pretty standard – nothing to tell your friends about. Keyboard was particularly good-looking, with chiclet-style keys. Sadly, after typing on it, it felt a little cheaply constructed, though we had no untoward problems during the duration of our use. Touchpad is fine on the size end and supports certain multi-touch gestures a la Aspire One, but is still not as comfortable to use as we’d like.
The screen was a high point. It’s hard to imagine the different one additional inch can make until you actually try it. Added to the fact that it supports a 1,366×768 resolution and you’ve got the best netbook screen available in its price range hands-down.
Performance was surprisingly better than most Atom netbooks we’ve tried at the price range, possibly because of the extra RAM Gateway managed to fit in. The ATI Radeon X1270 graphics made for pretty good movie viewing and some decent gaming, although video streaming in HD still suffered in parts. To put it simply, this is easily a top performer for a netbook, even next to many of the more popular models out there.
So what’s the catch? Only one – battery performance. Since this was a full-on Athlon 64, instead of an AMD Neo, power consumption was a bit less manageable. On a full charge, the notebook only lasted a little over 3 hours, making finding an outlet a requirement for most people looking to use this.
At its $380 price point, though, the Gateway LT3013u has virtually no competition among its peers. Everything else that offers similar performance and screen size is priced higher, well into the $450+ range. If you can sell your existing netbook away, I’d suggest getting this one instead (provided you can live with the battery drain).
iPhone OS 3.1: Why Many Aren’t In A Hurry To Upgrade
iPhone OS 3.1 rolled out this week. If you haven’t installed it or checked out reviews, let me give you the down low: install at your own risk.
Before thinking there’s something nasty in the new OS, let me assure you there’s none. In fact, a couple of good things come with upgrading. One is the new App Genius, a version of Apple’s song-recommendation engine ported for apps. Basically, it takes an inventory of all software you have installed, compares it with other users’ and builds a list of suggestions of ones you may like. While it comes with some flaws, it does offer a small reprieve to the problem of wading through over 75,000 entries in the App Store.
Another is the ability to organize your installed apps on the handset directly from iTunes 9 on your computer. Anyone who has slaved through the tedious thumbing and swiping to put some sense on the mess of icons on their phone will surely appreciate this. Other minor updates include improved media syncing, improved Exchange support and a couple of others.
Now, why the warning at the start? Well, 3.1′s major changes actually happen in the “features removal” category. More specifically, the new OS update removes the ability to tether from your iPhone (via that oh-so-easy flashing the firmware method) and removes anything and everything that has to do with Cydia (the unauthorized app store). Even worse, you can’t revert back to 3.0 once you upgrade, so you’re stuck without tethering (until AT&T actually lets you pay for it) and no cool, unauthorized apps.
Most folks will need more incentive than a recommendation engine to lose all that tethering goodness, Apple.
Sony E-Series Walkman: 16GB, $99 And Quality Performance
Sony has finally embraced the cheap pricing paradigm with their new E-Series Walkman media players. In fact, it’s the first big-name 16GB PMP that tips the price scales just under $100.
This second generation of the E-Series has a very basic design and measures around the same size as its predecessor. It might not be eye candy, but the simple layout makes it easy to manage. Physical controls include a five-way control pad, back/home button, an option key (that brings up contextual menus), a volume rocker on the right spine and a hold switch.
It uses the same menu as most of Sony’s Walkman line, which means you get a tried and tested interface that works great. There are no personalization options here, but you get the full range of UI niceties, from detailed sorting options to browsing albums visually.
Despite the low-end price, the E-Series features the same excellent performance we’ve come to expect from the Walkman line. Audio is clean and clear, with excellent balance. There are plenty of sound enhancement options as well, so you can tweak song output to your liking. Both videos and images look good, with the screen performing very amicably. In fact, they look bright and crisp even when viewing at an angle. Packaged earbuds aren’t too good, though, so best pull out your favorite pair.
We love the ease in which you can transfer files onto the player, which offers support for a variety of software (WMP, Rhapsody, iTunes and more) and Sony’s transfer app, which lets you copy via drag-and-drop. File support includes MP3, WMA, AAC, LPCM, MP4, H.264 and WMV.
Overall, we love the price and performance of the Sony E-Series Walkman. It doesn’t a whole lot of extra features, but that’s all well and good. At it’s price, all I want is great audio quality and delivers on that end like clockwork.
PS3 Slim Review: A Mixed Bag, But Everyone I Know’s Buying One
The Playstation 3 was a shining example of Sony’s somewhat questionable excesses. Years after the current generation of consoles hit store shelves, the company has finally scaled back, offering a revamped machine at a consumer-friendly price point.
At the $300 price point for the 120GB version, the PS3 Slim puts the franchise on equal playing field with the Xbox 360 in terms of hardware investment. The lighter weight and slim lines add even more chips to its stock, compared to its longtime-leading nemesis. What’s impressive, though, is that you get the same top-end hardware despite the smaller footprint. That means processing power that the 360 can only dream about.
First, let’s look at what’s bangin’ about the new console. We’ve already mentioned the price and the size. Apart from that, it retains the same swappable hard disk, features physical buttons (in place of the touch-sensitive crap on the fat PS3), uses half the energy and features an updated HDMI chipset. The latter gets you bitstream, Dolby TrueHD and DTS-HD audio to complement your already-awesome Blu-ray player. Performance is slightly improved with faster loading times than the original PS3.
Now, on to the bad. While the old PS3 featured limited compatibility with PS2 games, the PS3 Slim has removed it entirely. Enjoyed running Linux on your fat PS3? That’s also no longer allowed. It also lacks the mish-mash of card readers and two extra USB ports present in the original machine.
The real problem, though, is not the hardware. It’s the fact that Microsoft already has an established user base with Xbox Live, as well as library of games that puts the PS3 to shame. Given that the user base for the PS3 Slim will likely balloon up in the coming months, the library will probably grow by next. Who knows, Playstation Home might end up being as fun as Xbox Live too (give or take a year or two)?
Is Sony back in the console wars? You bet your ass.
