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Hauppauge - XFones PC-2400 review 2008-03-07 11:57:50 When it comes to headphones, wireless technology is a great boon. Having no annoying cord trailing up your neck is marvellously freeing. It also means you can mosh along to your favourite tunes without any danger of strangling yourself (ahem). Indeed, you can wander around the house listening to your MP3 collection, as this headset has a ten metre range from the plug-and-play USB dongle which transmits the audio signal. Our tests bore this figure out; in fact, we could even listen in the kitchen downstairs, and our PC is two floors above in an attic room. Now that's pretty impressive. The XFones are comfortable to wear, as well. They're proper headphones with large cups that fit nicely over your ears, boasting a diameter that would be sufficient for even Noddy's best mate. They don't feel Read more:review
Logic3 - i-Station Clock Dock review 2008-03-07 11:57:50 The latest iPod accessory from Logic
3 combines a more traditional clock radio with a mount for your player, putting your favourite music at your fingertips first thing in the morning. It has a rather retro feel, which we're going to assume was intentional, and is not entirely dissimilar to the LED display clock/radio alarms that started doing the rounds in the Eighties. This is obviously a bit more advanced, though, and as well as the radio (AM/FM only - there's no DAB) you get some degree of control over your iPod, which will charge when mounted and synchronise with iTunes if connected to your computer via USB. Unfortunately this control isn't all-encompassing, as you still have to fiddle with the player's scroll wheel to get to the right album; all you can do remotely once there is skip Read more:review
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Creative - TravelSound Zen V review 2008-03-05 12:10:34 To start with a negative, the sad thing is that use of the Creative TravelSound docking speaker set-up is so prescriptive. Compatible with the Creative Zen
V range of MP3 players, it won't even work cleanly with some of the company's own later models, and that proves to be a thorn in the side of an otherwise useful product. That's because the speakers themselves have a dual role. They can, as you'd hope, play back the music from the Zen player in question, but they also act as a charging station. What's more, from out of the box they're a breeze to set up. You assemble the plug fitting to suit a UK power socket (it's simpler than it sounds, don't worry!), plug in the speakers and that's part one done. Then the Zen player connects to a built-in mounting cradle (although it's not, surprisin Read more:review
Saitek - 3D 210 review 2008-03-05 12:10:26 Saitek's three latest speaker systems - the 3D 210, 3D 380 and 3D 590 - range in price from £19.99 to £49.99 and, while the 380 and the 590 include a subwoofer and considerably more wattage, the 210 is designed for portable use and can be connected to a PC, Mac, MP3 player or PSP via a simple jack connector. In terms of design, the stereo speakers are stylishly black and silver, smooth and cylindrical with a cone at one end. Part of the cylinder has been flattened so the unit can be positioned lengthwise on a desk and one end has also been levelled so you can have an alternative arrangement aimed upwards. One of the speakers houses the volume and bass controls and a headphone socket, plus a power input for the separate 9V DC power unit. Obviously you'll have to be within easy range of a Read more:review
Creative - GigaWorks T40 review 2008-02-28 17:06:49 When you look at pictures of Creative's GigaWorks T40, you'd be forgiven for thinking that they're small. Without anything to size them against, they look a bit like the kind of satellite pair you get with a £400 PC from Tesco. They're a lot bigger and better than that, though. With dimensions of 90 x 136 x 310mm, each T40 is the size of a decent sized back-shelf car speaker. They sit vertically on the desk and are angled to point slightly up from the horizontal. Each one comes with an optional stand, for increased stability, and they can be run with or without a front-panel gauze. Each speaker holds two 60mm, glass-fibre, mid-range drivers at top and near-bottom, with a 27mm dome tweeter between. Creative claims a spacious, balanced sound for this arrangement but, while we wouldn't argu Read more:review
TwinMOS - BooM1 review 2008-02-28 17:06:49 Apart from revolutionizing how we listen to music on the move, the iPod has also been at the vanguard of a style earthquake that has seen cool white emerge as the new black. With your Mac laptop under one arm and your iPod earphones firmly installed, there's only one element you still lack to be the peak in chic elegance* - a powerful yet portable sound system to share your 10,000 songs with your pals. Cue a sudden expansion in the number of docking stations aimed at keeping you cool while stretching your eardrums. The latest from Taiwanese company TwinMOS is the BooM1, a speaker and sub-woofer set that looks like it was designed for some futuristic episode of Doctor Who. The sub-woofer, for instance, which packs a meaty 25 watts, couldn't be further removed from the conventionally boring Read more:review
Gear4 - Blackbox review 2008-02-28 17:06:49 Last summer we review
ed Bluetooth aficionado Parrot's excellent Boombox and were impressed enough to assume that this form of wireless audio streaming had finally been cracked. Gear4 recently announced two similar solutions in the Blackbox and Blackbox mini; we have the larger of the two on test here but it's still substantially smaller than Parrot's offering and just about squeezes into the ‘portable' market. The main highlight of the unit is its appealing design. A sleek gloss black finish covers the top and front, and when you turn the thing on you'll find a range of controls that light up with a cool blue hue at the top and a dynamic LED-based equalizer at the front. You're also supplied with a remote control that apes the on-board controls, which comprise volume, play/pause, track
Etymotic Research - Ety8 review 2008-02-26 16:28:41 Etymotic Research
, a world leader of in-ear technology, is well known for its innovative developments in the field of aural research. It should be well equipped to develop the world's first in-ear Bluetooth headphones then, designed predominantly for use with an iPod but offering general Bluetooth support for other compatible devices. In the box you'll find the earphones themselves, a leather carry case, a range of adaptors and an 8-mate adaptor for an iPod. If you are planning on using one of Apple's players you'll benefit from a wider range of features, including volume and track control via the headphones and automatic pairing so you can avoid waiting while the device is found and paired manually. If you don't have an iPod you can pair the headphones with a PC, mobile phone or other de Read more:review
Kensington - FX500 Speaker To Go review 2008-02-26 16:28:41 In late 2006 Kensington released the FX300 Speaker
To Go, an audio solution for your MP3 player that offered both a sturdy, splash-proof, shock-absorbing case and built-in speaker with an exterior volume control. It was a great little travel solution at a reasonable price, but has now been superseded by the larger, stereo sound FX500. Kensington has stuck with a similar design, using the same black, hard rubber exterior for protection. It's obviously a lot larger, though, and the stereo speakers are completely concealed within the casing either side of a see-through plastic window through which you can access your player. Sadly the external volume control is gone: a simple on/off switch is the only exterior control, which means you can only adjust volume or control the device by pressing Read more:review
Shure - SE420 review 2008-02-25 14:27:54 Shure hopes the answer lies around the £250 mark, as that's the asking price for this SE420 set. They're not the most economical in the Shure range - the impressive SE210 and SE310s can be had for a reasonable amount less - but they do come up trumps where performance is concerned. They also put all but one or two similar products firmly in the shade. Shure's background lies in the in-ear units deployed by on-stage musicians, and the first thing that hit us was the comfort of the SE420s when inserted into our lug-holes. We've used such in-ear devices before and had to stop after half an hour due to discomfort. Yet we easily got past three hours and counting in one session with the SE420s and still weren't particularly troubled. We found that the modular cable system that Shure employs do Read more:review
Logitech - Audiostation Express review 2008-02-25 14:27:41 There's no shortage of speakers and accessories for iPod users, with a range of companies appearing to adopt a strategy of catering for every possible audio environment. Logitech
has a fair selection of iPod solutions itself, the newest of which is the Audiostation Express
. Hitting the middle ground between dedicated solution and travel companion, the unit is supplied in an attractive black carry case, with access points for the iPod dock and audio/video ports. Whether used in or out of the case it's an appealing enough if rather basic design: an extendable twist volume knob at the front adds some dynamism to what is otherwise a pretty minimalist product. Many of the features are oriented towards iPod users, and you'll only get the most from the speakers if you utilise the iPod dock and s Read more:review
Logitech - FreePulse Wireless review 2008-02-25 14:27:41 Portable music has certainly come a long way since it consisted of lugging your boom-box around on your shoulder. The walkman was a revelation, although it was still a little bulky for jogging. Then the MP3 player came along, and these days you can have a gadget the size of a stick of gum playing your music on the move. The only hitch remaining is the headphone cord, which can still be irritating especially if you're running, but that's where wireless headphones come in. The FreePulse Wireless
consists of a set of headphones and a Bluetooth adapter, along with a mains charger that charges both simultaneously. You can plug the adapter into anything with a standard 3.5mm jack - your MP3 player, PC, stereo and so on - and it will deliver wireless sound to the headphones within a ten metre ra Read more:review
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Yamaha - NX-U10 review 2008-02-21 11:03:30 It's probably the most common complaint about laptop computers that no matter how much hard drive space you have, how stunning your graphics card or the power of your CPU, when it comes to sound quality it's hard to rise much above the noise of a tinny old transistor radio. Of course you could plug in your desktop's 5.1 or 7.1 surround system but that's not much joy when you're on the move. So to answer this dilemma Yamaha
has come up with the NX-U10, a compact set of stereo speakers that amplifies the output and quality of your laptop's audio via the USB port. So confident is Yamaha of the result that the NX-U10 has been marketed as 'the world's most powerful USB speaker'. The problem in the past is that a USB port's usual maximum output is 5V/0.5A of power which appears very feeble emer Read more:review
Philips - SPA9300 review 2008-02-21 10:52:10 In a world that is awash with 5.1 surround sound speakers it makes a pleasant change to be faced with a set of 2.1 speakers such as this. The two satellites that sit on your desk look very stylish, however they are a little on the tall side at 19cm. Unusually, they are finished in stainless steel, although it looks similar to aluminium, with a tweeter stacked above two mid-range drivers. The subwoofer is an understated black cube with a grille on the front. As the sub will live out of sight under your desk or tucked in a corner of the room this rather suggests that Philips
spends its cash where it will be seen. Philips has joined the two satellites together so you only have a single jack to plug into the subwoofer. The company has also made the unusual decision of connecting the wired rem Read more:review
Nimzy - Vibro Max review 2008-02-21 10:52:10 Those who saw the popular Nimzy Vibro Blaster, released last summer, probably won't be surprised at the capabilities of the successor. Others are in for a wacky experience; this portable sound unit uses electro-acoustic technology to turn any surface into a speaker by vibrating it in such a way as to produce sound. We saw something similar a few years ago with the Olympia SoundBug, witch is a nice piece of hardware. The Vibro Max unit is a solid metallic box a little smaller than a Rubic cube, finished in piano black. It succeeds the Vibro Blaster by offering more power (claiming 20W RMS instead of 15) and a supplied remote control that includes bass and treble adjustment and a loudness setting. It's mains powered, which reduces the portability somewhat, but to get it to work you simply pl Read more:review
TerraTec - Headset Master 5.1 USB review 2008-02-21 10:52:10 The surround sound headset has turned out to be quite a trend. People use this piece of hardware all the time .From the humungous monstrosities of several years ago (with price tags to match), we're now being treated to more modest monstrosities that leave change from £50. TerraTec's HeadsetMaster
5.1 is one of the better examples of the breed, although it does display the bulkiness that's required to house the technology around your ears. It's still smaller than a good many similar headsets we've tested, but anyone seeking the discretion of iPod-esque earphones is in for quite a surprise. Along with other products of its ilk, it has a control box on the headphone cord and this is a stylish little beast that allows you to individually control the output through each channel. You can mu Read more:review
Sharkoon - Majestic review 2008-02-21 10:52:10 Wagering that few of you will have heard of it, it's the latest company to have enjoyed some success on the continent (Germany, in this instance), now looking to break into the UK market. It's doing this with some low-key products at first, but the 5.1 headset nonetheless caught our eye. Initially it was for the wrong reasons. Like any headset attempting to replicate the full 5.1 surround sound experience, it's not small. In fact, given the cloth feel to the headphones, they've got an air of the good old-fashioned ear muff about them. But fear not, because - with some reservations - Sharkoon has delivered. And there are several reasons why. First, sheer of ease. We'd expect nothing less, but the headphones, which connect via a USB port, installed themselves in quick time, and all three of Read more:review
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Creative - GigaWorks G550W review 2008-02-20 15:33:37 In the main Creative's GigaWorks G550W are a conventional set of 5.1 surround sound speakers. The subwoofer is rated at 130W and the five satellites are 36W each, which totals 310W RMS. However, Creative claims a peak figure of 550W which gives them their model name. GigaWorks speakers inhabit the upper reaches of Creative's product range and, while the audio quality is superior, you'll find that GigaWorks are more laborious to set up than a budget set of Creative Inspires. You've got three cables to connect to your PC sound card, with mini-jack plugs at one end and stereo RCA plugs at the other, but there is no colour coding to make your life easy. Then there are the five satellites which use spring clips on each of the stereo connections. Granted this makes it easy to substitute cables Read more:review
Trust - HS-6200 review 2008-02-20 15:33:37 Not a bad little headset this. Trust's latest mixes in headphones, a microphone and a 5.1-channel surround sound effect direct to your ears. And it manages to do it all really rather well. That said, we've never really been fully convinced by 5.1 headphones, finding them strong at creating some form of surround sound direct to your ears, yet never coming close to matching the genuine effect of a proper, standalone set of 5.1 speakers. These Trust headphones don't either, although once again you'd be hard pushed to argue with the surround effect they do manage to generate. Our ears were treated to lively audio with a useful bass, certainly in excess of what we were initially expecting. They're not too bad to wear either, and bearing in mind that the photo makes them look quite cumbersome, Read more:review
Creative Labs - Sound Blaster X-Fi Elite Pro review 2008-02-19 13:10:28 We've become used to the regular release of new graphics chips but it's a far rarer occurrence when a new audio chip comes to market, and it's no surprise at all that Creative Labs
is the company behind the new SoundBlaster
X-Fi. This is its first new audio chip since the Audigy 2 in 2002, which was a revision of the original Audigy from 2001. Audigy used 4.6 million transistors so it comes as something of a surprise to learn that Sound Blaster X-Fi is constructed with 51.1 million transistors. The chip is divided into five sections (Sample Rate Converter, Filter, Mixer, Tank and DSP) which are arranged in a configuration that Creative calls an Audio Ring. Creative worked out the details of surround sound audio many years ago so the ten-fold increase in transistors and processing power i Read more:review
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Logitech - Z5450 review 2008-02-19 13:10:28 For Logitech
's noisemakers come closer than any before, save for Saitek's more limited A-250. And while they're not perfect, the Z5450s offer a salivating taste of what's round the corner, combined with a healthy dose of fine audio work that's of quite brilliant quality. So let's backtrack. These 5.1 speakers are 'sort of' wireless. To explain: the front two satellite speakers, the centre speaker and the control box are all connected by - you guessed it - a wire, to the meaty subwoofer. That's the front of the soundstage accounted for. But the control box has an antenna on it, and that means it can wirelessly communicate with the two rear satellites, which no longer need a cable stretching right across your room to connect them up to the subwoofer. Yet there's a catch. While the signal to Read more:review
Terratec - Aureon 7.1 PCI review 2008-02-19 13:10:28 7.1-channel sound cards are not exactly thick on the ground, particularly those costing under £30, so plenty of games and home cinema enthusiasts may be considering this Terratec Aureon 7.1 PCI sound card for their systems. It has a column of eight sockets down its back panel, providing microphone and line inputs, four analogue speaker outputs and a pair of S/PDIF optical digital sockets for digital input and output. You can switch the microphone input to a headphone output, which is handy, but only by swapping jumpers on the board, not under software control. Terratec, never one for useful printed documentation, excels itself here with just three pages of set-up information. They include a diagram of the card, where the sockets are numbered 1 to 11 and the captions explaining their func Read more:review
Saitek - A-250 review 2008-02-19 13:10:28 True, wireless headphones are nothing new, but to set up a decent speaker system with no trailing wires has been something the technology industry seems to have been struggling with for years. So it's with a high degree of interest that we greet Saitek's 2.1 wireless speaker system, the A-250. Now it's admittedly hardly the most elaborate setup, with all the speakers built into one portable unit that looks like a smaller version of an old radio cassette deck. There's also a distinct lack of any kind of balance or equalising tools, save for the trusty old volume control, and that £90 price tag for essentially a 2.1 speaker setup without the flexibility of positional satellites isn't the best news either. You can either have them battery powered or run off the mains, and to get them talk Read more:review
Logitech - Z-5500 Digital review 2008-02-18 17:42:33 If you've never turned up your speakers while watching the latest Hollywood action blockbuster and felt the thump of an explosion come up through the sofa and reverberate around your ribcage, with the front windows rattling in their single-glazed sockets, you've never lived. Or at least, you've never lived audiophile-style. Naturally, you need a decent home theatre set-up to achieve this and Logitech
has a new offering in this department. The Z-5500 Digital
home cinema speakers are THX certified and feature a total 500 Watt RMS output, a good chunk of which is the meaty subwoofer (187W) that powers the aforementioned explosions. Dolby Digital, Prologic II and DTS are all supported. There are three 3.5mm mini-jacks provided to hook it up to your analogue sound card (2, 4 and 6 channel card Read more:review
Epson - Perfection V500 Photo review 2008-02-13 17:54:20 All-in-One printer/scanner/copier machines are all the rage at present, especially if you're trying to run a home office or small business on a fairly limited budget. However, the frustration for dedicated amateur and semi-pro photographers is that most multi-function machines manage to do several tasks reasonably well but none of them to a high enough degree of excellence. For this reason, a dedicated photo scanner or printer will always appeal to the keen snapper who demands high quality reproductions. Epson
has been aware of this for some time and its PerfectionPhoto
series has concentrated on meeting this need for those who don't have huge amounts of money but have plenty of enthusiasm. The main joy about the Perfection V500 Photo is that it caters for a wide range of standard and no Read more:review
Altec Lansing - FX4021 review 2008-03-09 12:18:35 One of the easiest ways to improve the sound quality of a desktop or laptop PC is to use better speakers. Even if you don't have a 5.1, 6.1 or 7.1-channel sound card in your machine, you can get much better results with a good 2.1 system than with any internal speakers. Altec Lansing's FX4021 set uses a novel speaker arrangement to produce good sound from the standard mix of a sub-bass unit and twin mid- and high-frequency satellites. The twin speaker units in the sub-bass enclosure - which is as large as a small, black paper basket - are mounted face-to-face in an isobaric arrangement. Isobaric, or constant pressure, speaker systems are designed to increase the bass range in a given size of cabinet, by using two speakers rather than one. By mounting them one behind the other to create a Read more:review
Acer - Aspire 9800 review 2008-03-17 11:03:49 Even if you think you've seen some large laptops, nothing quite prepares you for the size of Acer's Aspire 9800. It's not so much a desktop replacement as a desk replacement. The reason for its huge size is the fact that it has a 20-inch screen. Yes, that's twenty inches. Measuring 490 x 380 x 60mm (W x D x H) and weighing in at a hefty 8.5kg (including the huge power brick), there's no way you'll be lugging this monster of a laptop around. Despite the size of the screen, its resolution is a disappointing 1,680 by 1,050 pixels, which is low when you consider that you can get 1,920 by 1,200 on some 17-inch displays. It does, however, have a saving grace in Acer's CrystalBrite coating, which is high contrast and perfect for watching video and playing games. The graphics adapter is an Nvidia Read more:review
Samsung - R20 review 2008-03-28 15:52:00 Samsung
could have stuck to the tried and trusted Centrino formula when it developed the R20 but instead it chose to use a rare old mixture of components in this sleek laptop. There's a dual core Intel Core Duo T2250 processor running at 1.73GHz, but instead of the expected Intel 945GM chipset you get an ATi Radeon Xpress 1250 chipset which also supplies the graphics, plus an Atheros 802.11b/g wireless chip. Although the ATi chipset is a new model, the graphics core harks back to the X700 so it's a couple of years old. Despite that it has full hardware support for DirectX 9.0b and is therefore able to run the Aero interface in Windows Vista Home Premium with ease. The specification of our sample was rounded out by 1GB of relatively slow PC2-4300 memory - although you can specify up to 2GB Read more:review
Acer - Aspire 9303WSMi review 2008-03-28 15:51:00 There's no getting away from the colossal size of the Acer Aspire 9303, and it's all thanks to the 17-inch screen. This model measures 400 x 294 x 42mm and weighs in at a hefty 3.6kg, so you're going to struggle to carry it around when you're on your travels. The screen has a resolution of 1,400 x 900 which is a typical specification for a 15.4-inch widescreen laptop but on this model the screen looks rather grainy. That's a bit of a shame as the Acer runs Windows Vista Home Premium which puts an emphasis on cosmetic looks, with its Aero interface, so in that respect it's a bit of a let-down. However, there's a balancing argument. If you have weak eyesight you'll often find that the icons and fonts in Windows are too small for comfort and a high resolution screen only makes the situation Read more:review
Gateway - MX6932b review 2008-03-28 15:48:00 Rising like a Phoenix, the re-emerging Gateway
continues to produce well featured notebooks at attractive price points, one of the latest being the MX6932b. This is a powerful system that, as the label proudly boasts, is Windows Vista Premium ready - which basically means that it has enough poke in all departments to allow you to use the Aero interface in Microsoft's latest operating system. Like most current Gateway laptops it's available from Toys-R-Us, so you would imagine it has all the bells and whistles a home user would want. But strangely, apart from having Windows XP Media Center installed as the OS, the MX6932b's features list reads more like a capable business system (even though it weighs a hefty 3.2kg) rather than an all-round system for home use. You certainly can't play any Read more:review
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