TechRadar: Technology reviews

Review: Hanns.G HL229DPB

Matt Hanson — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 09:30:00 GMT

The Hanns G HL229DPB monitor has a 21.5-inch screen with a 1920 x 1080 resolution and a 1,000:1 contrast ratio, all for the very wallet-friendly price of £89. But is it too good to be true?

As you might expect from an LED monitor, the HL229DPB's weight is pretty light, even by flatscreen standards. However, we were disappointed to see that for all its LED splendour, it's not much thinner than a standard LCD monitor, with a thickness of 48mm.

Less surprising is the lack of a HDMI port. The DVI input is HDCP compliant, which means if you've got a Blu-ray drive in your Mac you can use a HDMI-to-DVI cable to view Blu-rays on this monitor.

The buttons aren't ghastly to use, but not as pleasant as the touch sensitive icons found on other screens. It's not as good looking as Apple's own monitors, but it is a lot less expensive.

Of course, the most important question is how good is the image quality? Pretty good, as it happens. Throughout our tests colours were reproduced well, with gradients running smoothly, rather than the blocky juxtapositions of colours displayed by some cheap monitors.

As you'd expect from an LED monitor, contrasts between light and dark colours were very good. Text was impressive, even with small fonts. Viewing angles were also good.

Review: AMD Radeon HD 7750

Phil Iwaniuk — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:02:00 GMT

Overview

If AMD's HD 7970 debut Southern Islands card arrived in a fancy tux heralding a bunch of world firsts (first PCIe 3.0 card, first DirectX 11.1-compatible), this HD 7750 turns up to little fanfare in a Burton polo shirt and trainers.

The new Graphics Core Next's architecture has already been shown off by the HD 7970 and those 4.3 billion transistors pack quite a punch, as it turns out, trouncing the very best of last generations' GPUs by around 20-30% at mega-high res.

The HD 7970 is also excruciatingly pricey though. At £440 its staggering performance and overclocking capability are out of reach to most gamers.

The HD 7750 should arrive hitting the right side of £80, making it an altogether friendlier proposal, and these new-gen AMD cards boast some excellent power efficiency by shutting off all but one core when your system enters power save mode.

But what's this HD 7750 missing out on to hit that price point? Does it still make high-res screens sing?

Benchmarks

We put the HD 7750 through its paces in the super-taxing Heaven 2.5 benchmark at a gigantic 2560 x 1600 and stressed every nanometre of its circuitry in the most demanding DX11 games at 1920 x 1080.

The HD 7750 bested Nvidia's rival sub-£100 card, the GTX 550 Ti, but came a cropper against the HD 6770.

DirectX 11 tessellation performance: Heaven 2.5: Frames per second: Higher is better

AMD HD 7750: 9.4
AMD HD 6770: 8.0
EVGA GTX 550 Ti: 8.9

DirectX 11 gaming performance: Frames per second: Higher is better

DiRT 3

AMD HD 7750: 28.64
AMD HD 6770: 36.83
AMD HD 6850: 42.62

Shogun 2

AMD HD 7750: 20.33
AMD HD 6770: 25.85
AMD HD 6850: 32.0

Metro 2033

AMD HD 7750: 11.67
AMD HD 6770: 10.33
AMD HD 6850: 15.67

Just Cause 2

AMD HD 7750: 26.13
AMD HD 6770: 26.19
AMD HD 6850: 34.14

Verdict

Our opinions on this freshman 'Cape Verde' chip are dependent on UK pricing. If the $95 US price converts somewhere near the actual exchange rate without too much mark-up, it'll be available at £80 or less, and if that's the case you'll be getting some great performance returns for your outlay if you skipped a generation or two in your graphics card upgrade schedule.

If that UK price falls closer to the £100 mark though, it'll be a misfire, rather than one of those classic AMD bargains you wait for with each new gen's advent. The HD 7750 is quicker than its big Nvidia rival, the GTX 550 Ti, and its predecessor, the HD 5770 - but not the HD 6770.

General performance is limited primarily by a slender 128-bit frame buffer, however the die-shrink down from 45nm to 28nm and increase in transistor count that comes with it gives this Southern Islands card a definite edge in tessellation-heavy tasks. It's apparent in its strong Heaven 2.5 score, but in non-synthetic benchmarks the performance gain from the new architecture isn't as noticeable.

Overclocking the HD 7750's a mixed bag, too. On the one hand, it handles big core and memory clock increases smoothly and without crashes - we had ours cranked up to 900 MHz on the core clock from the 800 MHz stock setting without any glitching or hangs.

The downside though, is that we didn't really achieve a whole lot of performance increase by doing so – it only reported a 0.1 FPS increase when we ran the Heaven 2.5 benchmark. That, along with general performance, is likely to change as the 7700 series' drivers mature though.

We liked

We'll get a better idea of the HD 7750's true worth when firm UK prices arrive, AMD's drivers optimise and third parties get their overclocking mitts on it, but at present all evidence points to a strong budget card that'll appeal to anyone playing at 1080p or lower, and keeps an eye on power efficiency.

We disliked

We're hoping there's more potential under the bonnet for overclocking performance than we were able to extract with the early drivers, since AMD's flagship 7-series card the HD 7970 overclocked so damn well.

If it doesn't work out that way, this card still offers enough stock performance over its peers to make it worth a look.

Review: AMD Radeon HD 7770

Phil Iwaniuk — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:01:00 GMT

Overview

AMD showed its hand first in this year's GPU arms race with Nvidia... by turning it into last year's arms race.

While Nvidia has kept shtum about its upcoming new 'Kepler' architecture and looks to do so until Spring, AMD stole the march and released the first of its new 7-series cards, the AMD HD 7970, a few days before Christmas 2011.

That sure was odd timing, but it taught us a lot about AMD's new Southern Islands architecture, specifically the 'Tahiti' chip. It's fully PCIe 3.0-supported, uses a 28nm manufacturing process to pack more transistors onto a PCB than ever before, and apart from offering very quick DX11 game frame rates, it's a highly energy efficient beast.

When your system drifts off into standby, the Tahiti card switches itself all but off too, minimising power draw.

The HD 7970's whopping £440 price made all those neat features all but irrelevant to the gaming masses though, so we're putting our hopes on this HD 7770 to deliver the best bits of the new AMD architecture for a more palatable price.

The 'Cape Verde' chip that this HD 7770 is built around makes full use of the new Graphics Core Next architecture like its big bro, with ZeroCore power efficiency in tow and a solid 1,000 MHz core clock. If it can offer a slice of the HD 7970's performance for this price, it's on to a winner.

Architecture, technology and specifications

The Graphics Core Next architecture is a bold move from AMD in that it represents a move away from the VLIW instruction used in 6-series cards towards a GPU-processing-friendly SIMD vector processor.

The previous processor type was great for graphics processing, but not suited to general purpose GPU computing - AMD left that side of things up to Nvidia and its CUDA cores.

Graphics Core Next is a u-turn on that philosophy though. GCN allows up to 16 data elements to be processed in a single clock cycle.

Grouping data before it runs through the vector processor is really efficient when dealing with general processing tasks - but the bad news for games is that you won't notice that difference in Battlefield 3 - the strengths of this architecture are wider-reaching than that, even as far as the professional market.

GCN also understands advanced languages like C++, meaning that in the long run, it'll be easier for developers to make use of the 7-series cards for complex programs.

The performance improvement from this architecture comes from passing data through a ton of compute units, which all work on the same operation until it's completed, and the resulting compute performance of this HD 7770 card is impressive at 1.28 TFLOPS.

It's built with ten compute units rather than the HD 7970's sixteen, but that's still enough to demonstrate a marked performance increase on last generation's equivalent model. And with AMD and Nvidia now adopting similar stances in their design, it's becoming an increasingly straight battle between the two - no hiding behind the blurred lines of CUDA cores and stream processors.

So the number of compute units and the simplified SIMD instructions they perform give AMD's 7-series cards the brains, but the clock speed is still the brawn of the operation. And at a world-first 1,000 MHz, it's fair to say the HD 7770 has brawn in check.

Benchmarks

We tested the HD 7770 with the most demanding DX11 around at 1080p, and with the Heaven 2.5 benchmark at 2560 x 1600 to really test its limits. It fared reasonably, demonstrating why it's more expensive than the HD 7750 and keeping in the same ball park as the pricier but older HD 6850.

DirectX 11 tessellation performance: Frames per second: Higher is betterHeaven 2.5

AMD HD 7770: 11.9
AMD HD 6850: 12.5
EVGA GTX 550 Ti: 8.9

DirectX 11 gaming performance: Frames per second: Higher is better

DiRT 3

AMD HD 7770: 41.73
AMD HD 7750: 28.64
AMD HD 6850: 42.62

Shogun 2

AMD HD 7770: 30.77
AMD HD 7750: 20.33
AMD HD 6850: 31.86

Metro 2033

AMD HD 7770: 13.00
AMD HD 7750: 11.67
AMD HD 6850: 15.67

Just Cause 2

AMD HD 7770: 31.18
AMD HD 7750: 26.13
AMD HD 6850: 34.14

Verdict

Many of the HD 7770's new features won't be noticeable right away. The underlying architecture is a big step forward for AMD that programmers and developers will find attractive, but for gamers looking to get playable frame rates out of DX11 games at 1080p its benefits aren't as obvious.

We're expecting the HD 7770 to enter at around the £100 point, which means it's going up against Nvidia's 550 Ti. While we didn't see it outperform the Nvidia card by the 100% AMD implied, it does hold a clear performance advantage, in addition to the subtler features under its bonnet.

Our sticking point though is that it was outclassed in every benchmark we ran by the previous generations' darling; the HD 6850. With just £20 difference between the two cards, we'd have liked to have seen a closer battle between the two.

It's worth mentioning that AMD's drivers tend to get better results from any given card after a few months of refinement, so further down the line we might see more parity in the benchmark figures between the two cards.

As with the HD 7750, the HD 7770 didn't impress in its overclocking performance the way AMD's high-end HD 7970 did. That £440 card maxed out AMD's overclocking software settings before crashing; the same can't be said here.

We managed to add on another 50 MHz to the core and memory clocks which yielded a modest increase in our benchmark tests, but it wasn't a reliable runner with those settings - glitches and crashes kicked in after a few minutes. Hopefully we'll see the full extent of the HD 7770's potential when the third party manufacturers release their beefed-up versions.

The 7-series might not all deliver staggering performance and overclocking, and that's to be expected given their wildly different pricings, but there is one feature that consistently impresses across the range - ZeroCore.

This is power-efficiency taken to a happy extreme – when your system enters a long-idle state, the HD 7700 along with all 7-series cards completely powers down the fan, 3D engine, compute units, shaders – virtually the whole card. The only activity going on comes from a small bus control block, which simply lets your computer know that the card still exists and no-one stole the GPU while it's been asleep.

We found it to be fast-acting, and dramatically reduced power draw when our system went idle.

We liked

This HD 7770 brings AMD's new architectural features to the budget audience with reasonable success.

Its GCN design and ZeroCore power efficiency make it a compelling argument to choose new over old, but it doesn't quite blow the best of the 6-series cards out of the water in plain old gaming performance.

We disliked

The HD 6850 can't do the 7-series cards' tricks, but it can render Metro 2033 frames quicker, and that makes the HD 7770 a tricky one to recommend.

As a stock card, it doesn't offer anything outstanding, but aftermarket companies might yet yield some impressive performances out of it.

Review: Apple Final Cut Pro X 10.0.3

Steve Paris — Tue, 14 Feb 2012 10:16:00 GMT

When Apple released Final Cut Pro X back in June, it caused a furore. This wasn't the Final Cut Pro that people had grown to love, that had revolutionised the video editing industry and that had taken both the independents and the major studios by storm.

This was something else, and given how many features had vanished, many thought it certainly didn't deserve its 'pro' monicker.

But Apple is keen to show its customers that just because some features were dropped from the current version, doesn't mean that they'll never make a comeback. So it got busy and released two fairly substantial updates last year.

Now comes the third one, which is the biggest since the program's launch. Apple's engineers have tried to meet professional editors' most pressing needs, which include support for multi-camera editing, improved chroma keying, the ability to connect to broadcast monitors, and better import and export options, among others. So how does it all look now?

Multicam is easy to use and incredibly powerful. Just like in FCP7, it can handle up to 64 different angles, but unlike its predecessor, you can work with clips of multiple formats and frame rates without having to render or convert them - they all play at the same time in the Angle Viewer.

The chroma keying tools that came with version 10.0.0 were already better than version 7's, but the added refinements are incredibly impressive.

To test it out, we loaded up one of our first attempts at a green screen, where everything that could have gone wrong, had. The improved Chroma Key filter did remarkably well. It wasn't perfect – we would have been amazed if it was, considering the material it had to work with, but compared with what you could achieve with FCP7's built-in filters, it was impressive.

Compatibility with broadcast monitors is absolutely crucial and is achieved via third-party cards as well as Thunderbolt-enabled devices. The process is labelled a Beta, so check with the manufacturers to make sure their solution is compatible - you'll also need to be running Lion.

The beauty of this update is that it covers many parts of the editing process. For instance, you can once more work with multi-layered Photoshop files and manipulate each layer individually.

Keyframe behaviour has reverted back to the way it used to work: in the previous version, if you set a keyframe then altered that parameter elsewhere along the clip, another keyframe would be instantly created for you. For some reason, that immense timesaver had disappeared in FCPX but it's now reinstated.

But perhaps most important of all is the program's compatibility with XML 1.1, a format that allows you to import and export data from your project and its clips to and from other programs. This means it's now finally possible to bring your projects from FCP7 into Apple's new flagship editing application - although this can only be done via a third-party program called 7toX.

It's not all good news though. For instance, it's still impossible to create sequences of any size - you're limited to a select few standard options. And if you work in green screen a lot, you'll puzzle at the absence of garbage mattes.

However, the list of missing features is dwindling and it may be time to explore FCPX more seriously, especially if you can migrate your projects. This is the first version that we feel may be worth considering from a professional perspective.

Review: Packard Bell OneTwo L

Matt Hanson — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 17:10:00 GMT

Overview

All-in-one PCs should be a big success.

By combining all the power and flexibility of a desktop computer into a slim and stylish form factor that included a monitor, all-in-one PCs such as the Asus Eee Top ET2010 and MSI WindTop AE220 could have been the Windows-based answer to the Apple iMac.

Instead, they're regarded more as pale imitations that are underpowered, cumbersome and neither as desirable as an iMac or as robust as a desktop PC.

The new Packard Bell OneTwo L enters this market with both an opportunity and a challenge: to finally be an all-in-one PC that is worthy of a space in our homes, be it in the living room, bedroom or study. But can it pull it off?

One of the most common criticisms of all-in-one PCs is their lack of power. While their small form means that multiple graphics cards and overclocked processors are a no-no, it also means that upgrading components is a far more fiddly process than with standard desktop PCs.

This means that they need components that are future-proof, so your new all-in-one won't seem out of date and slow only a year or so down the line.

Gaming laptops such as the Asus G74SX prove that a small body doesn't mean it can't be incredibly powerful - for a price.

Packard Bell's answer is to include some pretty decent specifications inside the OneTwo L I7526. The quad core Intel Core i5 2400S 3.1GHz processor is enough to handle pretty much all day-to-day computer tasks with ease, and 4GB of DDR3 RAM is ready to cope with multitasking. Sure, it won't handle the latest games like the Asus G74SX, but it costs nearly half the price.

It's still not cheap by any means, though, so Packard Bell still has its work cut out to convince us to part with our cash.

As the Packard Bell OneTwo L comes with a 23-inch touchscreen, it encounters another familiar hurdle - Windows 7 just isn't designed for touch interfaces. Packard Bell's solution is to create a new touch-friendly interface, superficially similar to Windows 8's Metro screen. But how well does it work?

Specifications

TechRadar Labs

3D Mark 11: 3133
Cinebench 10: 15,155

You've got to hand it to Packard Bell. It's upped its game since its mid-90s nadir, when the Packard Bell logo on a PC would be tantamount to a big flashing 'Do not buy' sign. Nowadays it has a much better reputation for building solid machines, and the Packard Bell OneTwo L is no exception.

Build quality is sturdy, but it's not the most stylish all-in-one computer, and certainly won't give Apple any cause for concern in the looks department. It's not too bad though, and resembles a slightly chunky LCD TV.

A large Packard Bell logo glows on the right leg of the OneTwo L's stand, which can be distracting if you're watching movies in a darkened room.

The similarities to an LCD TV don't end there. There's an RF Aerial socket at the back for receiving Freeview channels, although there's no Freeview HD.

While an HDMI port on a PC isn't much to crow about these days, the Packard Bell OneTwo L has an HDMI-in port, which means you can plug in a Blu-ray player or console and use the computer as an HD TV.

The OneTwo L impresses as a computer as well. As we mentioned previously, the Intel Core i5 2400S 3.1GHz processor and 4GB of RAM gives it an oomph that is often lacking in all-in-one PCs. There's plenty of hard drive space as well, with 1TB available.

Coupled with the excellent screen, capable of 1080p resolutions, this makes the Packard Bell OneTwo L a very persuasive media centre.

A standard Windows Media Center remote control is included along with a wireless keyboard and mouse. It's not amazing, but helps the Packard Bell OneTwo L look at home in your living room or bedroom.

While a multi-card reader on the side of the screen helps burnish the Packard Bell OneTwo L's media centre credentials, there are a few omissions that would make us pause in enthusiastically recommending this all-in-one as a media messiah.

To begin with, there's no Blu-ray drive, just a standard DVD-RW. While you can always plug in a separate one via HDMI, it still feels like a missed opportunity to make this a fully future-proof and feature-packed media centre PC.

The other omission is the lack of any decent audio-out ports such as optical S/PDIF - there's just a simple headphone jack. This means if you want to hook it up to external speakers or amplifiers, you're out of luck - you'll have to stick with the small built-in speakers.

Performance

If you'll use the Packard Bell OneTwo L for watching TV and movies - both standard definition and high definition, through online streaming services such as the BBC iPlayer - then you're going to be pretty pleased with this PC. The screen looks great, with great colour reproduction and smooth playback thanks to a pretty decent response time.

We'd even recommend plugging in a PS3 or Xbox 360 into the screen if you haven't got a dedicated HD TV. The only negative with the monitor is that it's quite reflective, which led to some bad glare when viewed in a room with lots of ambient light.

As a touchscreen it works as well as could be expected, with good responsiveness and accuracy. Windows 7 is as bad with touch controls as we've come to expect, but the included Packard Bell TouchPortal interface aims to circumvent this.

At first glance this seems like a poor man's Windows 8, with a weather app and large fonts that ape Microsoft's Metro interface. To dismiss it like this wouldn't be entirely fair though - after all, Packard Bell should be commended for acknowledging that Windows 7 isn't ideal for a touchscreen, and for trying to offer an alternative.

Applications such as TouchBrowser and TouchPhoto offer an internet browser and image viewer respectively that have enlarged interfaces and recognise touch gestures, such as a swipe of the finger to flick through photos. The gesture recognition is a tad hit and miss - it sometimes got confused about whether we wanted to view another photo or rotate the current one - but it's a nice extra feature. However, we can't really see it catching on.

Crucially, anything you can do here can be done much quicker and easier through the standard Windows 7 interface with the good old keyboard and mouse. We were hoping to see an interface that would make us want to ditch those in favour of the touchscreen, but it wasn't to be.

With the launch of Windows 8, however, this could become a fantastic touchscreen computer, with the new operating system and powerful components working in tandem to maybe produce the all-in-one PC that we've been waiting for.

As it is, though, Windows 7 just feels like a hindrance without a mouse and keyboard.

Using traditional controls reveals a nice, snappy performer, great for quickly browsing the web or watching movies. Games on the other hand didn't do well, though if you stick with casual games you'll be fine.

Verdict

Weighing up whether or not to recommend buying the Packard Bell OneTwo L is a tricky decision. Don't get us wrong - it's a very decent PC and easily one of the best all-in-ones we've seen. It's packed with loads of features too, bar the exclusion of a Blu-ray drive and optical digital audio.

So what's staying our hand from stamping a big TechRadar recommendation all over this product?

The big problem is Windows 7 - it's a great operating system, but it's just not cut out for touchscreen controls. Icons, buttons and text are just too small to comfortably use with a touchscreen, and if you find yourself using the keyboard and mouse over the screen, what's the point in paying extra for it?

Sure, the Packard Bell TouchPortal makes a valiant effort to improve the usefulness of the touchscreen, but it's not the smoothest solution, and ends up locking away a lot of Windows 7's more advanced features.

What the Packard Bell OneTwo L really needs is an operating system that's been designed for a touchscreen, with all the power of a full version of Windows 7.

Of course, this is exactly what Microsoft is working on with Windows 8.

In a year or so, if the Packard Bell OneTwo L came with Windows 8 out of the box, we'd definitely recommend it. As it is, if you buy it now you may feel you'd need to shell out on upgrading to Windows 8 when it comes out. We're not sure at the moment how much this upgrade will be, but we'd recommend waiting until Windows 8 is launched.

We liked

The components inside the Packard Bell OneTwo L are certainly powerful, and for day-to-day computing and media playback it works smoothly and flawlessly. The 23-inch screen is also fantastic, if just a tiny bit too shiny, and the ability to plug in a Blu-ray player or games console and turn it into an HD TV is a massive boon.

We disliked

For a machine that's so good at playing media, it's a shame that it doesn't come with a Blu-ray drive or decent audio-out options, meaning that it's not quite as future-proof as we'd have hoped. Also Windows 7 just doesn't work with the touchscreen, and the Packard Bell TouchPortal interface isn't quite good enough.

Final verdict

Looking for a small HD TV and a computer for your bedroom or living room? Then the Packard Bell OneTwo L is easily one of the best all-in-one PCs on the market, and a worthy investment. Want a powerful desktop PC for graphic editing, playing games or working on? You can get a lot more power for a lot less money elsewhere. Once Windows 8 arrives, however, this could be a very tempting purchase for all.

Review: Fuji X-S1

Gavin Stoker — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:02:00 GMT

Overview

Always liked the idea of an all-in-one camera with a massive zoom capability, but hated the often all too-plastic feel? Fuji's X-S1 may, nay will, cause you to re-evaluate the humble bridge camera.

Whereas Fuji has previously applied an 'X' - its signifier of a premium camera - to the Leica-like FinePix X10, for the first time it gives a superzoom that same distinction.

This means that the new 26x optical zoom Fuji X-S1 figuratively sits above the existing Fuji HS20 and HS30 models, even though the latter boast 30x zoom (maximum 720mm equivalent telephoto setting in 35mm terms).

While the construction of all three Fuji HS models to date has for us been more solid than any competing bridge camera, the Fuji X-S1 takes build quality to a new level. It looks and even smells gorgeous, thanks to a rubberised coating adorning the entire DSLR-like body.

Despite the neck-straining weight of 945g fully loaded, photographers aren't likely to get butter-fingered with this camera, even when manually operating the similarly rubber-entombed zoom, here running from a wide 24mm to 624mm in 35mm terms.

Thankfully this is supported by optical image stabilisation, which is needed.

At a suggested price of £699 in the UK or $949 in the US, the camera is immediately competing directly with your actual DSLR, so once again it's worth weighing up whether a focal range this broad and an all-in-one solution is actually required. Or if a DSLR's lens-swapping flexibility - the X-S1's optic is resolutely fixed - would suit you better.

The 'X' in the name is not just a marketing ploy. The Fuji X-S1 features the same sensor as that of the X10; namely 12 megapixels and 2/3-inches in size, once again using Fuji EXR CMOS technology which, in slightly gimmicky fashion, can be deployed in a choice of three ways, as it can on Fuji's existing compacts.

We also get an EXR processor, delivering a blink-and-miss-it 0.01 second shutter lag. And the attendant features we'd expect on an enthusiast's camera are all present and correct: full manual control via P,A,S,M modes, manual focus and raw shooting option, Full HD video capture with dedicated record button snuggled just below the shooting mode dial, 10fps burst shooting at 6MP, Fuji's film simulation modes buried in the menus, 500 shot rechargeable battery, plus a panorama mode that can take in the full 360 degrees. Phew!

Build quality and handling

Gripped in the palm, the Fuji X-S1 feels seriously substantial - a good deal more rugged than most entry and mid-range DSLRs, in fact. There's sufficient space between lens barrel and meaty grip to comfortably squeeze the three or four fingers of your right hand, while the left hand naturally grips the lens barrel to provide a steadier aim at longer telephoto settings.

This may not be the cheapest bridge camera, but the construction lets you know you're getting what you've paid for. To zoom in and out, you simply twist the lens barrel.

While the camera is big and bulky, the knock-on effect is that - usefully - so are the controls.

Chief among them is an 11-option mode dial offering the usual creative quarter of Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Manual settings, three custom settings, scene modes, Advanced mode - which is where we find the 360-degree panorama option - plus Auto mode and EXR sensor mode. The latter again features an Auto EXR option, or the aforementioned three user-selectable settings.

These are full resolution HR (High Resolution) mode, 6MP high sensitivity low noise images in 'SN' (Signal to Noise) mode, or 6MP high dynamic range 'DR' option to avoid a detail-devoid bright background or dark foreground.

As with Fuji's other EXR suffix cameras, the X-S1 achieves the latter by automatically capturing and combining two separate shots.

For setting up photos and videos, the Fuji X-S1 offers both a comparatively large (roughly half inch) and bright 1.44million dot electronic viewfinder (EVF) with a time-saving eye sensor to activate it.

Switching from the EVF to the 3-inch LCD screen below requires the pressing of a dedicated button. The EVF might win favour over the larger, 460k-dot resolution LCD display, were it not for the fact that the latter is angle-adjustable.

The Fuji X-S1's LCD screen can usefully be tilted up or angled down, as on Sony NEX cameras such as the Sony NEX-5N, but sadly not swung outwards from the body through 180-degrees as the screen on, say, the Canon G1 X.

While making low or high angle composition easier, the Fuji X-S1's LCD isn't one for composing self-portraits. We did find it very useful, however, and it encourages greater experimentation - which is exactly what you want.

Performance

A flick of the on/off switch encircling the shutter release button and the Fuji X-S1 powers up in just over two seconds - not exactly lightning-quick then, or comparable to a semi-pro DSLR, but swift enough.

More favourably, a half squeeze of the shutter release button and the determining of focus and exposure is pretty much instantaneous.

Take the shot and a full resolution JPEG file is committed to memory in just over two seconds. Shoot a raw file instead and although you'd expect the writing duration to lengthen, this isn't noticeably the case.

Usefully, the Fuji X-S1 also provides a dedicated raw button to the bottom-right of the back plate, so we didn't have to first fiddle with menu screens to find this option and implement it.

We remain unconvinced that there's a great deal of difference to the naked eye when viewing the images taken in disparate EXR modes, but the film simulation modes on the Fuji X-S1 are another matter.

'Provia' is the default setting, and for us renders colour a little weaker than is actually present in the scene. Selecting the saturation-boosting 'Velvia' mode instead produced a far greater impact, while remaining on the right side of realistic.

This option proved especially useful for primary colours in landscape scenes, making greens more verdant, although if someone in a red jacket appears in your frame, they'll leap out like a sore thumb.

Metering when left to the camera's auto default is competent, delivering even exposures and maintaining both foreground and background detail, even on the dullest of days. In this respect it outshone the Canon G1 X, which needed far more user control to make a decent fist of it.

In terms of natural and low light photography, there's an integral flash with manual activation button on the Fuji X-S1 that can be deployed for fill-in if required, although it's worth mentioning that above ISO 3200 the resolution drops, image size automatically set at Large Medium for JPEGs (rather than Large Fine), and Large Small if reaching the maximum light sensitivity setting.

At top whack ISO 12800, images are noisy and lose detail to the extent that it appears as if you're viewing them through a sheet of muslin.

There is, however, the range has 22 different ISO settings that includes four auto ISO modes, where the user can restrict the camera to going no higher than say ISO 400, ISO 800, ISO 1600 or ISO 3200 - in other words retaining full 12MP resolution captures.

Although there is image noise at ISO 3200, it's at a level we can live with, in that it didn't spoil the image too much.

Sample images

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SINGLE SHOT: This more than acceptable maximum telephoto shot shows what the Fuji X-S1 is capable of pulling out of the bag if the blurring effects of hand wobble can be avoided. This was taken handheld, and in Single Shot mode.

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SUPER MACRO: Conversely, the Fuji X-S1 also boasts a 1cm Super Macro option that enables you to get so close to your quarry that the lens is almost touching it, as here. This pleasingly enables you to fill the frame. Here we've also deployed Velvia film simulation mode to boost the yellows.

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PANORAMA: The Fuji X-S1 automatically stitches together a burst of sequential images produced when panning the camera from left to right in 360 degree panorama mode. Like anything, this requires a few goes, since moving too slow or fast confuses the camera, resulting in a truncated image. Eventually it's possible to achieve a result with real impact (if, inevitably, with the occasionally visible overlap).

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MAX WIDE ANGLE: As with any superzoom, it's important to scrutinise maximum wide-angle and tele settings. Here it's the former that has for us retained detail right into the corners while avoiding obviously prominent barrel distortion or a fish eye effect.

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MAX TELEPHOTO: A maximum zoom (tele) setting shot taken from exactly the same vantage point as our wide-angle image. Again this was taken handheld and required four or five attempts to get pin sharp, or close to it, as here.

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VELVIA: Another shot taken at near the maximum telephoto end of the Fuji X-S1's zoom, here using a fence post in lieu of a tripod for support. The Velvia setting has also been deployed to bring out the richness of colour on the horse.

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SHARP: It's all about image - and the image - with the Fuji X-S1, so this tightly framed subject appeared apt. Detail is sufficiently sharp at full resolution for the viewer to be able to make out the newspaper headlines and text.

Sensitivity and noise

Full ISO 100 image, see the cropped (100%) versions below.

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Verdict

A premium camera that is also a bridge camera, or vice versa, the Fuji X-S1 certainly feels like Fuji's best superzoom yet - even if its focal range doesn't quite match that of, say, the Fuji HS20.

The Fuji X-S1's build quality really makes the strongest impression, knocking spots off rivals such as the Canon PowerShot SX40 HS, Olympus UZ models, Panasonic DMC-FZ48 and FZ150, and even the Nikon Coolpix P500.

In other words, the Fuji X-S1 looks and almost handles like a professional camera, even if in truth its best bet in terms of finding an audience is probably the amateur photo enthusiast with deep pockets, who probably already owns a mid-range DSLR, a decent premium pocket camera, and is now looking for something with a longer lens for a bit more poke.

While just two short years ago Fuji was probably best known for its stack 'em high, sell 'em cheap point-and-shoots, the introduction of the 'HS' bridge models followed by the X series compacts, and now this jack-of-all-trades premium bridge model, shows that it is really raising its game.

Fuji has now got the cameras. Now all it needs is for the photographic community to get back behind it.

We liked

The Fuji X-S1 sports a design and finish nearly up there with the semi-pro DSLR that one could otherwise buy for the same price. If you enjoyed the previous Fuji HS series superzooms then this one, while not overly dissimilar, is a stonker.

We disliked

While the focal range offers a great range of framing opportunities and suggests itself as perfect for candid photography, it's almost impossible to avoid blur when shooting handheld towards maximum zoom, which somewhat defeats its usefulness for those who don't constantly pack a tripod. Also, you'll want to stick at ISO 3200 or below, despite the temptingly wide ISO range on offer.

Final verdict

The Fuji X-S1 is an ideal purchase for the photography nut looking for one camera that can do it all, and prepared to compromise on having image quality not quite on a par with a semi-pro DSLR that one could buy for a similar outlay.

As with any superzoom, it really is about whether you need that whopper of a lens on the front. If you do, then the Fuji X-S1 is presently about the best big zoom bridge camera that's out there.

Bear in mind, however, that while it looks like an SLR it has a compact camera sized sensor.

Review: Samsung Galaxy Xcover Extreme S5690

Sandra Vogel — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:50:00 GMT

Overview, design and feel

We all know that Samsung isn't exactly a shrinking violet when it comes to smartphones. It has a wide range of handsets, spanning all price points and covering Android, Windows Phone and even its own Bada operating system.

Samsung has been in the rugged mobile phone arena before, although only with 'dumb' phones such as the Solid Extreme B2100. Now, though, Samsung seems to have finally noticed the success Motorola has had with its Defy and Defy+, and has decided to jump onto the bandwagon with a rugged handset of its own.

The result is the rather heavily named Samsung Galaxy S5690 Xcover Extreme, which you'll probably see referred to as either the Samsung Galaxy Xcover or the Samsung Galaxy Extreme. We're opting for the Samsung Galaxy Xcover for this review.

The Samsung Galaxy Xcover is IP67 certified, meaning it's able to survive under a meter of water for up to 30 minutes, and can withstand dust too. Clearly it needs to be well sealed to perform these feats. The sealing looks relatively subtle, but we'll test it later.

Both the headset slot on the top and the USB slot along the bottom are protected by hinged covers. The USB slot is also quite recessed, and we had trouble getting our usual 'one size fits all' connector to fit into the hole.

The power button on the right and the volume rocker on the left are fairly flush with the chassis, and presumably well protected underneath.

The backplate is held firm with a screw-type lock, and even when you release this you need to prise it away. There's a secondary seal around the battery for double protection. The Samsung Galaxy Xcover's screen, of course, is made from Gorilla Glass.

The handset is a somewhat chunky beast, measuring 121.5 x 65.9 x 11.95mm and weighing 135g. There is a lot of unused space above and below the screen that makes it seem a bit over-engineered, and the 3.65-inch screen looks a little lost.

Beneath the screen are three fairly large buttons for Home, Back and Menu. Yes, they're well sealed against water and dust, but this doesn't in any way affect their comfy feel under the fingers.

Look closely at the volume rocker, incidentally, and you'll see a torch icon. Hold this end of the rocker down and you can toggle the camera LED for use as a, well, as a torch.

Specs-wise, Samsung hasn't really pushed the boat out with the Galaxy Xcover. Android is version 2.3 Gingerbread. The 800MHz processor isn't what we'd call state of the art, and with just 150MB of free storage you'll need a microSD card almost immediately.

The camera is another letdown, offering just 3.1MP of shooting power.

Considering that Clove, who supplied our review sample, is selling the Samsung Galaxy Xcover for £226.80 SIM-free in the UK, then maybe these specs are to be expected. In the US, we found it priced at $385 SIM-free on Amazon.

There's also the usual GPS, Wi-Fi and HSDPA on the Samsung Galaxy Xcover.

Interface

There's nothing very unusual about the way the Samsung Galaxy Xcover works. The user interface is very familiar indeed, with TouchWiz sitting on top of Android 2.3 Gingerbread.

That means that all the home screens have four shortcut icons at the bottom, taking you to Dialler, Contacts, Messaging and Apps. When you switch into the apps menu, for example, the four shortcuts remain, but the Apps shortcut is now replaced by one for the main Home screen.

You start out with three home screens, but if you hit the Home button then choose Edit you can add more, up to a total of seven. This Android 2.3 feature means you can customise the number of home screens to your own taste.

Meanwhile Samsung provides a reasonable range of apps, including Active Applications, which shows you when system resources are getting low and gives a quick link into the Task Manager to close any you don't need.

It also includes a neat weather app that links into AccuWeather for five-day forecasting.

Meanwhile, if you pull down the notification bar on the Samsung Galaxy Xcover, you can access connection settings and even switch the sound to vibration mode and disable automatic screen rotation. It's nothing we haven't seen before, but it is all good stuff.

One user interface aspect we really like is the message notification on the Samsung Galaxy Xcover's lock screen. Just slide it to the left and the handset opens right up into the messaging area.

Contacts and calling

The Samsung Galaxy Xcover supports Samsung's SNS services, which means it can bring in your social network contacts to one place.

Setting up accounts is easy, and you can tell the Android smartphone how often to check for updates.

And you can instruct the handset precisely what updates to check for.

Once you've set up Facebook and Twitter, the contacts area is populated and you can see everyone's little photo by their name, and whether they're a Facebook or Twitter contact.

You can easily search this list using the search box, and if you click through you can see people's contact details and history.

The other way of reaching out to your contacts, of course, is via the Samsung Galaxy Xcover's smart dialler. Call this up and start tapping out a name or number and matches are displayed. There isn't much space for the display, but a little number to the right of the only match that shows tells you how many there are, and tapping it gives you the full list.

In-call services are well thought out, with easy links to hold, the speaker and mute button and to go back to the dial pad.

Call volume on the Samsung Galaxy Xcover was good, although we'd have liked a bit more volume from the speaker, which seems under-powered.

As with TouchWiz, there's nothing here that we haven't seen before, but Samsung lays all the elements out well, and the feature that any phone must get right - calling - is well handled.

Messaging

The Samsung Galaxy Xcover handles your Facebook and Twitter contacts via its Social Hub, which is where it also handles SMS messages.

Initially this looks inviting, but in fact it doesn't mean there are integrated Twitter and Facebook apps on board. Tap either option and you're taken to the mobile web versions of each social network.

Worse than that, while we were automatically logged into our Facebook, the Samsung Galaxy Xcover had the cheek to ask us to log into our Twitter again. It's hardly a fully-integrated solution.

Moreover, there are no dedicated apps for Facebook or Twitter pre-installed. You can get both from the Android Market, of course, but their absence makes the Samsung Galaxy Xcover a fairly socially unaware handset out of the box.

To add a little insult to injury, we had a bit of a problem with sessions expiring and found we had to log in again quite frequently. If this were an ongoing problem with the Samsung Galaxy Xcover we'd be pretty annoyed, since the whole point of seamless social network integration is that it is seamless.

Moving on to SMS text messaging - the other thing the Social Hub handles - this is a rather more pleasant experience. Missed calls are listed here, as well as text messages. Click through to create a new SMS, and the screen offers smart dialling in its search box.

When it comes to typing messages, the keyboard lets things down a bit. You have to pop onto a second screen for punctuation and numbers.

It slows down the rush of fingers across the screen a little.

On the other hand, the threaded message view works well and gives you a reasonably lengthy view of an SMS chat.

The Samsung Galaxy Xcover offers Swype, but you can't turn it on and off from within the keyboard settings. It's in the general settings area under Locale and Text.

This is also where you can turn on and off predictive text and different keyboard types, including old fashioned numerical style keypads and handwriting recognition in portrait mode.

Of course there's email support too, and you can set up accounts very easily by adding in the standard information. It's nice that the keyboard offers '@' and '.com' shortcuts here for quick information entry.

Internet

The Samsung Galaxy Xcover has both Wi-Fi and 7.2Mbps HSDPA, so it ought to be able to cope well with web browsing in simple terms of downloading pages.

And it did, too. It took about 12 seconds to pull down and resolve the TechRadar home page over the network, which is nice going.

The 3.65-inch screen is just about big enough for comfortable web browsing, although its resolution, at 320 x 480 pixels, is some way behind what we'd expect from a higher-end smartphone these days. Still, when we did a double-tap to zoom in, web text was readable and not blocky at all.

Text reflowing isn't what it should be, though. A double-tap to zoom into a TechRadar story we wanted to read didn't result in good news.

We only really got to read without a lot of scrolling when we flipped into landscape mode. What you experience in everyday life may vary depending on the websites you read and how they're originally formatted, but we weren't too happy with what we found.

Moving on to take a look at how the Samsung Galaxy Xcover handled Flash, there was more disappointment. Its 800Mhz processor isn't up to the job, so embedded video was a bit of a no-go area.

On the other hand, there's a nice bookmarks area, which also offers your most visited sites and browsing history, enabling you to get around fairly quickly. To add a bookmark, you just tap a little icon to the right of the search box.

Camera

The camera on the Samsung Galaxy Xcover is something of a disappointment on paper. It shoots stills at just 3.1 megapixels, making it pretty much entry-level as far as today's smartphones are concerned.

The lens is slightly recessed, so it should be able to avoid getting scratched and buffeted by all the rough and tumble the phone is designed to take, and there's a flash.

The flash doesn't work well more than a few feet from your subject, however, and even then it's not great.

Shooting modes are fairly limited, but there is a panorama mode and alongside the usual sports, indoor and night modes there's a mode for photographing text.

Camera controls sit on the edges of the Samsung Galaxy Xcover's screen, where they are easy to find by touch. Because there's no shutter button, you can assign the menu key as a camera shutter, or use the on-screen button, which is just as easy.

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WHITE SKY: You can see at a glance that the camera delivers only average quality photos. It can't cope with the sky in this photo, though the water and the bridge are OK, as is the greenery. Zoom in even a little bit and you notice the pixelation.

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PANORAMA: Panorama mode stitches together eight photos, which are taken in sequence automatically as you pan. The result is a photo 2640 pixels wide x 400 pixels high. The stitch quality isn't too bad, and the process is fairly fast.

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MODES: Moving through the standard Normal, Black and White, Sepia and Negative filters, you see again how badly the camera handles variance in light. The sky wasn't especially bright on our shooting days, either.

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INDOORS: Indoors, the camera copes fairly well with average household lighting conditions. But don't try to take pictures as it gets darker.

Video

YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PfG2D1iNY6E

The major problem with the Samsung Galaxy Xcover's video camera is that it is limited to shooting at a maximum resolution of 640 x 480. It captures 25.7 frames a second at this resolution.

That's really not good enough for video you want to share, although videos do display well enough on the 640 x 480 screen of the handset itself.

Media

The Music Hub icon on the Samsung Galaxy Xcover's apps list might look appealing and interesting, but in fact it's fairly bland.

The app isn't even pre-installed. It has to be downloaded from the Samsung App store via a link, and as you start the download process the Samsung Galaxy Xcover tells you that you have to change a setting first.

Now, call us churlish, but that might put the odd newbie off.

Still, if you do go ahead you get the Music Hub, which is basically an online store.

If you'd rather play music you already own then you'll need a microSD card, since there's only 150MB of internal storage for any data you might have.

The microSD card slot is under the battery, which under normal circumstances we'd grumble about because it makes hot swapping impossible. But because the Samsung Galaxy Xcover is rugged, the slot needs as much protection as possible, so we'll forgive its location in this case.

The music player is a basic rendition that does its job well enough, but without frills. It has so few frills, in fact, that it could only be bothered to find album art on our microSD card some of the time.

When tunes are playing, there's a playback controller in the notifications area. Just pull that down and whatever app you're in you can move around within a playlist.

The built-in speaker delivers quite a good volume, but there's a bit of distortion to the output at top volumes. Plug in a headset and you get the benefit of Dolby 5.1 sound, which does make a bit of difference, but there's still noticeable distortion even with quite good headphones.

An FM radio adds another facet to audio-based entertainment, and the auto scan kicks in the first time you run the app without you having to ask. That's a nice little feature, and scanning only takes a couple of seconds.

The radio has a round dialler button you can sweep to move through frequencies, or you can simply choose a channel from the presets. There is room to store four favourite stations at the bottom of the screen.

When it comes to video playback, the Samsung Galaxy Xcover isn't hugely capable. It can cope with MP4, H.264 and H.263. It played our samples without jerking, though, and colour rendition was good.

Battery life and connectivity

The Samsung Galaxy Xcover has a 1500mAh battery, which is pretty generous and should, on paper, provide a relatively long life. We've not seen an official battery life quote from Samsung, but elsewhere we've seen it quoted as good for 11 hours talktime on 3G and up to 640 hours of 3G standby.

We found the battery to live up to the usual smartphone expectation of delivering about a day's worth of life between charges, but what you get will of course very much depend on how you use the Samsung Galaxy Xcover.

When we left it on overnight just with Wi-Fi on, it lost about a tenth of its charge just ticking over. Playing music for an hour lost it about 20 per cent.

And over a two-and-a-half hour period when we used the video camera, played music continuously and sent and received emails over Wi-Fi indoors and 3G outdoors, the battery drained down to close to half of its power.

So, we reckon if you use the Samsung Galaxy Xcover on a daily commute, you ought to budget for an afternoon power boost, and another in the evening.

Connectivity options don't run to the likes of DLNA and HDMI - this isn't an expensive enough smartphone to warrant those.

But Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are of course here, HSDPA supports 7.2Mbps downloads and 5.76Mbps uploads, and those who like their location-aware services will be pleased to see A-GPS is here too.

In addition, you can use the Samsung Galaxy Xcover as a portable Wi-Fi hotspot.

Maps and apps

With GPS and Google Maps on the Samsung Galaxy Xcover, mapping and navigation is nicely taken care of. There are plenty of information layers available these days, such as satellite and traffic data, and Google Maps often proves itself really useful when we are out and about.

Samsung has added a few apps to the Android standard set. It's a pity the nice Notes app from the Samsung Galaxy Y isn't here, but then you can very easily find oodles of notes apps in the Android Market.

Polaris Office looks like it's installed because there's an icon present, but like the Music Hub we mentioned earlier, you have to download it from the Samsung App store.

It is free, and we suppose this ensures you have the latest version, but the download process is a bit of a pain.

Once you have it, Polaris Office enables you to create documents that are compatible with Word, Excel and PowerPoint, as well as edit existing documents.

There's also a books app, which gives you access to ebooks including a good few for free, although the idea is really that you buy ebooks. When we looked, there were plenty of new titles on offer.

There's also a little workout helper called Cardio Trainer, but if you are into using your phone for fitness you can find better apps in the Android Market.

With both the Android Market and Samsung Apps - Samsung's own app store - on board, you've plenty of scope for beefing up the apps content of this smartphone.

Rugged features

We've noted that the Samsung Galaxy Xcover is classed as a rugged smartphone, yet it looks quite attractive.

The USB and headset slots have protective hinged covers, the backplate is held down by a screw, and inside the back there's a seal around the edge and a second seal around the battery.

SIM and microSD card slots are under the battery. To cap it off, the screen is made from Gorilla Glass.

We subjected the Samsung Galaxy Xcover to a few tests to find out how rugged it really is. We dropped it semi-accidentally a few times, including against the edges of metal filing cabinets, onto pavements and down the stairs. There wasn't a scratch on the chassis.

We tried to scrape scratches on the screen with a knife. No joy.

We took the Samsung Galaxy Xcover on a run, stowing it in the sweaty back pocket of our training bottoms, and it weathered the storm. We even sat the handset under a running tap for 15 minutes, and it survived that too, although a little water did seep under the backplate.

Hands on gallery

Official gallery

Verdict

The Samsung Galaxy Xcover is a rugged Android smartphone, and in that it has only two real competitors - the Motorola Defy and the newer Defy+, so the comparisons are inevitable.

The build doesn't feel quite as solid as that of the Defy, and the general specifications aren't as advanced either.

The Motorola Defy+ has a 3.7-inch 480 x 844 pixel screen vs a 3.65-inch 320 x 480 screen on the Samsung Galaxy Xcover.

The Defy+ camera shoots at 5MP as opposed to 3.1MP here. The Defy + processor runs at 1GHz as opposed to 800MHz on the Galaxy Xcover.

And there's no price difference to mirror that, with the Defy+ currently costing exactly the same as the Samsung Galaxy Xcover, priced at £225/$385.

We liked

The Samsung Galaxy Xcover looks neat - its bronze sides really help it stand out from the crowd.

The microSD card is under the battery, where it's best protected from water and dust.

The camera LED can be used as a torch thanks to a feature added to the volume rocker.

We disliked

The build feels a bit on the plasticy side, and there was a little water seepage under the backplate in our 'run under the tap' test.

Web browsing isn't too great, with poor text reflow and no Flash support.

The handset feels a bit big in the hand considering its screen size, and it is in particular a bit on the tall side.

Screen resolution is on the low side for a modern smartphone.

Camera resolution is quite low, at 3.1MP, and video resolution is woeful, at 640 x 480.

Final verdict

Samsung has made rugged handsets before, and not done too bad, but this is the first time the company has brought rugged features to an Android smartphone, and we aren't all that excited, because the general specifications are average rather than great.

If we were choosing a rugged smartphone right now, we'd choose the Motorola Defy+ rather than the Samsung Galaxy Xcover. Sorry, Samsung.

Review: iBooks Author

Steve Paris — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 10:41:00 GMT

Apple iBooks Author

Amazon's Kindle, Barnes and Noble's Nook, and even Apple's iBooks have been working on moving us away from reading physical books and embracing the digital revolution.

But until now, there was very little to convince us how good an idea this could be, since the digital versions looked very much like their real-world counterparts, right down to the page turning effect.

You'd save a lot of weight if you tended to carry a few books with you, but no title appeared to offer the limitless potential of a true digital book, something more akin to what you can achieve with apps, for instance.

All this and more is what Apple is trying to accomplish with its new content creation app, iBooks Author. Its aim is to revolutionise modern textbooks by bringing interactivity to the learning experience.

Not only can you add images to your pages, the reader can zoom in or out of them. You can insert Keynote slides or movies that can either be viewed embedded inside a page or full-screen. There's even the possibility of creating short quizzes to test your reader's knowledge retention.

You'd think that all this would require a lot of programming knowledge, but that's the beauty of iBooks Author: it's incredibly simple to use, and if you're familiar with Apple's iWork suite, you'll feel right at home within its interface.

It's a bit like a cross between the iWork apps Pages and Keynote, but you can't change the page format in any way: it's designed solely to be used on an iPad – even iPhones and iPod touches are left out.

On template

Just like other iWork programs, you start with a choice of template, six of which are offered by default, although you can create your own if you so choose.

You can write straight into iBooks Author, but it's also easy to import content from a Pages or Word document. Text is brought in seamlessly, but more complex formatting and embedded images can cause problems with the layout. The best option is to bring in the text then add the multimedia in iBooks Author.

Inserting media is child's play: you have a Media window from which you can locate photos, movies and music already stored on your Mac. Applying interactivity is done with the use of one of seven widgets, including being able to insert HTML dashcode applets, like those used to create Dashboard widgets on your Mac.

You can also preview your work as you design it: connect an iPad to your Mac, click the Toolbar's Preview icon and your book will be transferred across the USB cable for you to check. A purple 'Proof' banner will appear on the cover of your ebook and you'll be able to browse through it and interact with your widgets to make sure they all work as expected.

Once you're happy with the results, you can export your work in the iBooks format (or as a PDF or text file, but you'll obviously lose all the interactivity). That iBook can then be transferred to any iPad. It's a fantastic means of creating your own interactive documents and could do wonders in the classroom.

If you'd rather profit from your endeavour, you'll need to respect the program's licence agreement which states that you have to make your iBook available exclusively on the iBook Store (the content remains yours of course, so you're free to redesign your book using a different program and sell it elsewhere).

You'll need to acquire an ISBN number (an industry-standard code designed to catalogue all publications), and if you're not a US resident, you'll also need a unique reference number from the IRS. However, free books can be made available anywhere without such restrictions.

First iterations

Despite all the things this app allows you to do, and how it will empower teachers and even home-schoolers to design their own textbooks, it's a 1.0 product, which means it's a little rough around the edges at times.

Aside from the occasional glitches that prevent you from altering the content in any way (a quick restart of the app solves that problem – thank goodness for Lion's Autosave feature!) there are some odd inconsistencies.

For instance, the whole interface is designed around text boxes. You can link them so that your words flow seamlessly from one box to the other. However, in order for that to work, new linkable text boxes must be created with the help of a text box already present on your page. Text Boxes created from scratch by clicking on the relevant toolbar icon can't be linked to others.

Worse still is iBooks Author's draconian restrictions when it comes to video formats. Only H.264 files are tolerated, but not all H.264 files are created equal. Try dragging a video clip you shot on your iPhone, iPod touch or iPad and it'll be rejected, even though we all know Apple's iOS products save their footage in H.264. If you export an iMovie project on your Mac, it's the same problem (you have to use the Share command to create a kosher version).

What's worse is that files made with HandBrake, a video format conversion tool, or created with the excellent screen capture program ScreenFlow, won't work either – even though you can play back these files directly on your iPad, iBook Author refuses to. To make them work, you must open them up in QuickTime X and export them for the iPad. It seems like an unnecessary and unintuitive step to have to take.

This run-around is far from what we're used to from Apple. But despite these problems, iBooks Author is an amazing program which enables anyone to create a polished interactive ebook in little time.

If you can live with the licence agreement, you can have a lot of fun engaging with your students or customers. As long as they all own iPads, of course.

Review: Samsung Galaxy W

Luke Johnson — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 15:35:00 GMT

Overview, design and feel

Flying the Samsung-branded flag for the mid-range smartphone market is the Samsung Galaxy W, a handset also known as the Samsung GT-I8150.

Having taken the high-end smartphone market by storm with the Samsung Galaxy S and subsequent Samsung Galaxy S2, Korean tech giant Samsung is now intent on dominating the full mobile phone scene with a flurry of boundary-pushing handsets.

With a 3.7-inch form factor and Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system, the Samsung Galaxy W pushes the boundaries of its lower mid-range smartphone price point.

The phone features a strong 1.4GHz single-core processor, offering the grunt to power a handset that also packs a 5MP rear-mounted camera, 720p HD video recording capabilities, 512MB of RAM and a flurry of connectivity options.

Touting an array of specs comparable to former top high-end Android smartphone the HTC Desire, the Samsung Galaxy W perfectly demonstrates exactly how quickly the smartphone scene is evolving.

The Samsung Galaxy W is set to duke it out with other 3.7-inch Android smartphones such as the Motorola Defy+, while its 1.4GHz Qualcomm processor is the same speed as that of the Sony Ericsson Xperia Arc S, and faster than the 1.2GHz offering on the BlackBerry Torch 9860, both of which cost around £100 more than the Samsung Galaxy W, priced at around £249.99 on Pay As You Go.

A relatively compact handset, the Samsung Galaxy W - in which the 'W' stands for 'Wonder' - features an aesthetically pleasing form factor, with the handset's 3.7-inch WVGA LCD capacitive touchscreen boasting a 480 x 800p resolution.

The smartphone's interface enables you to seamlessly access desired content and use the extensive array of app-based content on the pre-loaded Android Market.

Offering a lot of bang for your buck, the Wi-Fi, 3G, Bluetooth 3.0 and GPS-enabled Samsung Galaxy W lands with a spec far superior to that of a number of its similarly priced competitors.

Lining up at a respectable 11.5mm thick, just 0.2mm thicker than the HTC Sensation, the Samsung Galaxy W's round edged design might not be first in line for any beauty awards, but it is a form that in no way offends on an aesthetic front.

With the handset's rigid and compact design resulting in a 114.7g weight, the Samsung Galaxy W is just over a gram lighter than the 116g heft of its 4.3-inch Super AMOLED-touting high-end sibling, the Samsung Galaxy S2.

Relatively well crafted with little flex or distortion when put under extreme pressure, the two-toned body of the Samsung Galaxy W is let down considerably by the over-apparent join between the main shell and the removable back plate, which runs like a parting seam around eight tenths of the handset's edging.

In typical Samsung Galaxy fashion, the W's removable back panel is scarily thin and unnervingly delicate. When removing it, it seems so fragile that you fear a snap any time you take it off to replace the SIM, battery or well-hidden microSD storage card.

Comfortable and unobtrusive in the hand, the Samsung Galaxy W features a design that fails to accentuate its key features. Although not noticeably overpowering at first glance, the phone's bezel can at times make the device's screen feel quite narrow, detracting from the otherwise pleasant visual offering.

Although not offering an on-screen experience with as much pop or attention-grabbing vibrancy as its high-end rivals, the Samsung Galaxy W features a more than acceptable screen. The capacitive touchscreen display sports the same dimensions and 480 x 800p resolution as the ClearBlack AMOLED offering on the Windows Phone-powered Nokia Lumia 710.

Accentuating the handset's smooth design traits, the USB connector-come-charging port is hidden beneath a sliding tab, a move that aids the appealing aesthetic but can make it fiddly to open and access.

Weighing down heavily on the side of the touchscreen revolution, the Samsung Galaxy W features just three physical buttons, with a raised home button landing alongside well-placed volume controls and a power switch.

Everything else is touch-based, including the Android standard back button and option key, something that might not appease traditionalists but certainly bolsters the smartphone's physical appeal.

Interface

As with virtually all Android 2.3 Gingerbread-powered handsets, the Samsung Galaxy W interface is intuitive and easy to follow, with the standard array of Google apps and widgets residing on the seven available home screens.

As with all Samsung Galaxy devices, the handset comes packing the company's TouchWiz user interface for a further enhanced, joyfully simple user experience at all times.

Thanks largely to the 1.4GHz Qualcomm processor and 512MB of RAM, there is little judder or stilted transition when switching between this collection of home screens, or indeed when jumping back and forth between menus.

With easy, highly responsive scrolling controls, the Samsung Galaxy W is extremely user-friendly. Its simplistic layout and positive use of Android ensure that both complete novices and relative veterans of the Google operating system are able to quickly navigate their way through the grid-based app menu or home screens.

Requiring little initial setting up or unnecessary faff, the Samsung Galaxy W offers you the most likely desired content in prime positions direct from the box, with access to the Android Market clearly labelled, enabling you to further fill the handset with other content.

Contacts and calling

Arguably still the most important aspect of any smartphone, no matter how many fancy bells and whistles it plays host to, is its ability to make calls with a strong, clear, interruption-free connection.

As impressive and high achieving as some of the Samsung Galaxy W's more superfluous features might be, as a standard pocket blower, the phone falls a little short of expectations.

While it might be easy to navigate through the calling process, once connected, calls often sound quite airy and distant, with a little background distortion and muffling causing those on the other end of the line to sound quiet and isolated compared to other handsets.

Despite these audio quality issues, during our period testing the phone we experienced no unexpected dropped calls or complete loss of signal.

On the contacts front, thanks to its Android innards, the Samsung Galaxy W offers a simple and seamless user experience, with an intuitive process requiring no explanation to access, modify, search and add contacts and personal details as desired.

With communication histories for individual contacts easily accessed via a run of shortcut menu options within the contacts book, communications between those in your address book is further bolstered by the ability to sync with connected social media accounts and assign contact images based on Facebook profile pictures.

Further enhancing the user experience and making it easy to find desired contacts in what could potentially be an otherwise highly cluttered mass of names and numbers, all contacts can be organised easily into groups. The standard group names of 'Co-workers', 'Family' and 'Friends' can be further enhanced by the creation and self titling of further groups, a process that is neither arduous nor time consuming.

Messaging

A core pillar of any modern smartphone is it messaging capabilities. Here the Samsung Galaxy W once again covers all the basics and most common extras but fails to push the boundaries to set itself apart from the crowd of similarly priced devices, such as the Sony Ericsson Xperia Ray and some full QWERTY-touting BlackBerry handsets.

In typical Android fashion, messages are simple and easy to read, with a well sized and spaced font enabling quick absorption of incoming content, be it via SMS or email.

One of the Samsung Galaxy W's stumbling blocks while constructing messages - an issue that rolls across to its search and browser functions - is its slightly cramped and narrow-lettered keyboard in portrait mode.

Thanks to its full touchscreen interface, the Samsung Galaxy W's QWERTY keyboard offering is that of the Android software and TouchWiz UI. While not offensive or cumbersome to use, the touch QWERTY input will result in many users with average to larger-sized digits repeatedly finding themselves correcting errors and accidentally pressing multiple keys.

Although this issue is less apparent when holding the phone in landscape orientation, Samsung has largely corrected the issue itself with the inclusion of the Swype input system. This enables you to simply drag your finger between letters with the software then filling in the likely desired words - a system that, more often that not, works.

Continuing its run of user-friendly features, both email and SMS messaging services feature prominently on the handset's main home screen direct from the box, with MMS messages able to be sent via a simple tap on the attachments option while in the messaging menus.

Internet

Quick and simple to connect to a wireless internet network, the Samsung Galaxy W is a joy to use as a source for internet browsing and online content perusal.

With strong connectivity and fast load times over both Wi-Fi and 3G connections, the Samsung Galaxy W hosts a well-sized URL input box and a handy bookmarks tab.

Enhancing the user experience and cutting down on irritating lag, the Samsung Galaxy W's browser features extremely quick image and text rendering, enabling you to pinch to zoom in on desired content and have it available in an easy to absorb manner in a fraction of a second, for an uninterrupted browsing experience.

Requiring no unnecessary user input, the full web experience is open to you, with the phone's integrated browser capable of handling both HTML 5 and Adobe Flash content, including Flash videos, direct from the box. This further bolsters the handset's already impressive web credentials.

Easily navigated via the standard touchscreen controls, the handset's Android-necessitated back button acts as further navigation through previously viewed web pages.

Unlike most computer-based browsers, however, the Samsung Galaxy W offers no means for scrolling forward through pages if users have already skipped back. Although not a catastrophic omission, this feature is sorely missed when required.

Camera

Sporting a 5-megapixel camera on the rear, the Samsung Galaxy W's photographic capabilities are rather impressive, with sharp detail and strong colour management across a range of lighting conditions and subject matters.

Although 8MP snappers will no doubt soon be filtering down into the mid-range smartphones, the Samsung Galaxy W's current 5MP camera will fulfil the needs of most users.

Quick to focus in good lighting conditions, the handset's camera is somewhat let down by its low light abilities, with heavily grainy and noisy images the result when shooting without the flash.

Use the LED flash and the results are pleasantly surprising. Unlike many handsets that offer over-exposed, whited out images when shooting with flash, the Samsung Galaxy W provides images of impeccable colour and contrast management with the additional light source well distributed to accent fine details and highlight desired areas of interest.

See full res image

The one downfall of using the Samsung Galaxy W's camera with the flash on, however, is the heavily increased focusing times, with the camera's incorporated autofocus feature repeatedly second guessing itself before finally agreeing on a point of focus.

Adding to the handset's rear-mounted snapper abilities is a second - VGA - camera on the front. As with most forward-facing phone cameras, the Samsung Galaxy W's VGA offering provides heavily grainy end results, offering little inspiration and creating little desire to use the handset's possible video calling abilities.

Video

As well as shooting strong 5MP still images, the Samsung Galaxy W's rear-mounted camera captures impressive 720p HD video content at up to 30fps. Impressive stats on paper, the handset's recording capabilities are rather hit and miss, with performances slightly less than the quality expected when taking into account only the cover notes.

On the positive side, the Samsung Galaxy W possesses strong light management with its video content, like it does for still shots, making good use of natural light when available and quickly adjusting to varying conditions of light and shade when recording.

On a more negative, note the handset's audio recording abilities let the visuals down, with the accompanying sound often tinny with a static air that lacks clarity and the crisp, clear sounds that are expected.

On the design front, the high, central positioning of the lens makes shooting content a tricky task when trying to avoid unwieldy fingertips sneaking into shots.

Media

Featuring less than 2GB of available internal storage, the Samsung Galaxy W hasn't been created with high-performance, storage-heavy media in mind. Although these storage limitations can be easily overcome with an additional microSD card, up to 32GB in size, some of the handset's other media pitfalls are harder to overlook.

The biggest offender on the media front is the Samsung Galaxy W's audio abilities. An inbuilt speaker drastically lacks depth, producing audio and video playback that misses deep, bass-heavy tones. Instead it replaces rich, premium audio output with tinny notes and voices that are almost warped when watching video content with any amount of dialogue.

Furthermore, despite a number of handsets, such as the HTC Sensation XE, now coming boxed with a pair of impressive in-ear audio buds to further enhance your sound experience, the Samsung Galaxy W lands packaged with a pair of poorly constructed, tacky plastic buds. These offer no reassurance of quality at first glance, and their performance matches their unappealing physical appearance.

Aside from these audio issues, the Samsung Galaxy W's 3.7-inch screen offers a pleasant base on which to enjoy video content, with the Google-brimmed handset coming pre-loaded with the YouTube app, enabling quick access to hours of video content on the move.

Other media offerings on the Samsung Galaxy W include the incorporated FM radio and the ability to perform minor edits, such as cropping and simple contrast alterations to images shot with the device.

Battery life and connectivity

One of the often maligned features of modern smartphones, the Samsung Galaxy W's battery is highly impressive, with the handset breezing past the hump of a single day's heavy use and easily getting through a second day without the need for further charging.

Thanks to its 1500 mAh Li-Ion battery, the Samsung Galaxy W touts a claimed eight hour 20 minute talktime life, with 3G enabled, and up to 420 hours standby time. Both figures ring true, with a day's regular use across calls, web-based activity and media features leaving the phone with around half of its juice still to spare.

Despite landing at roughly half the price of some of its top-end competitors such as the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich-packing Samsung Galaxy Nexus and the Apple iPhone 4S, the Samsung Galaxy W features a far superior battery life, thanks to its more conservative feature offerings.

On a connectivity front, the Samsung Galaxy W boasts a vast array of options, with the standard Wi-Fi and GPS offerings further bolstered by the integrated USB connector and Bluetooth 3.0 options.

While the handset is fast to access wireless networks and boasts strong connectivity once signed up, the phone can also be used as a Wi-Fi hotspot, to offer wireless internet connectivity to a number of further Wi-Fi-hunting gadgets. Simple to set up, the personal Wi-Fi hotspot feature is intuitive to manage, with resulting connectivity providing strong, speedy coverage.

Maps and apps

Thanks to its Google-branded Android innards, the Samsung Galaxy W comes pre-installed with Google Maps and the service's standard array of location and navigation-based features. Although a handy service to have lined up on your handset's home screen, the inclusion of Google Maps is no great surprise, with the software typical of virtually all other Android devices.

In terms of apps, the Samsung Galaxy W boasts two main outlets for users to fill their devices with post-production content and handy tools, games and the usual utilities, with the standard Android Market followed up by the Samsung Apps offering.

Replicating much of the app selection from the official Google store, the Samsung Apps outlet sees a number of apps land with considerably higher price tags than when bought via the Android Market. A prime example of this is Bejewled 2. Available from the Android Market for just £1.99, the same game from Samsung Apps costs £3.00.

While many will turn to the Android Market and Samsung Apps outlet for additional content, the Samsung Galaxy W comes pre-loaded with a hearty selection of app-based features that enhance the user experience and entertain.

Covering all bases with a selection of games, utilities and business-assisting apps, the pre-loaded offering, which features the likes of The Sims 3, Hangman, Polaris Office, YouTube and the standard Samsung Social, Music and Game hubs, often presents you with a tester of what can be further expanded and fully used for an additional price.

Hands on gallery

Official gallery

Verdict

Overall a very strong mid-range smartphone, the Samsung Galaxy W is not without faults. Combining strong hardware with strong software, a few cracks appear where the two join.

While the handset isn't the pristine, perfect product that some would hope, it is, however, one that pushes the boundaries of its sub-market expectations.

With a £249.99 PAYG price tag, or available for free on contracts as low as £25 per month, the Samsung Galaxy W proves great value for money, repeatedly exceeding expectations where it counts - in overall base performance.

We liked

Largely well designed, well constructed and well finished with Android 2.3 and the Samsung TouchWiz user interface, the Samsung Galaxy W surpasses the core abilities of a number of its closest competitors. It even rivals the performance capabilities of some handsets around£100 more expensive.

The handset's 1.4GHz Qualcomm processor makes the Samsung Galaxy W a joy to use for standard tasks, with smooth, quick transitions between applications enhancing the user experience and bringing some fluidity to the phone.

Elsewhere, the Samsung Galaxy W's browser is fast and simple to use, bolstering the online experience, while the 5MP rear-mounted camera offers up a surprise with its strong light management while shooting both stills and video content.

We disliked

Let down by the inbuilt speaker, the Samsung Galaxy W isn't a device targeted at the hardcore media-absorbing market. Nor is the smartphone particularly strong on the calling front, with distorted connections a considerable bugbear when using the handset on a long-term basis.

Final verdict

Strong in some areas, weak in others, the Samsung Galaxy W is a mash-up of the best and slightly below par offerings on the mid-range smartphone market for those users not yet ready to make the jump to the high-end and costly Samsung Galaxy S2.

A very impressive battery life far exceeds those of its higher-end, higher-priced rivals, while the intuitive interface and speedy processor offer a strong introduction to the smartphone scene for those who are adopting the well-priced Samsung Galaxy W as their first trip away from feature phones.

With the numerous benefits outweighing the negatives, the Samsung Galaxy W is an impressive offering for its price point, with premium components creating a strong all-round user experience.

Review: Kogan LED55

John Archer — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 14:48:00 GMT

Overview

It's fair to say that Kogan is not - yet - a household name in the UK.

But if the Australian brand's LED55 TV (also known as the Kogan KULED551HDAA) is anything to go by, this situation could be about to change fast.

Here's the deal. The Kogan LED55, as the no-nonsense part of its name suggests, is a 55-inch TV that uses LED technology. This isn't new, of course, but here's the fun bit: the LED55 can be yours direct from Kogan's UK website for just £999. Including free shipping.

The expectation from such a price/screen size/technology equation has to be that the Kogan LED55 is going to be a basic television. Yet actually, a scan of its specifications suggests that it's got quite a lot going on.

For instance, it's got a Freeview HD tuner on board, showing that Kogan has taken the trouble to localise its flagship TV for the UK market. It's also got 100Hz processing, suggesting that maybe it's going to spare at least a thought for the small matter of picture quality.

Then there's its built-in PVR functionality for recording from the tuners to a USB storage device, while sound comes courtesy of an SRS TruSurround processing system.

Even the fact that it uses Edge LED lighting to illuminate the 1080p pixels in its monster screen is significant. It's good to know, too, that the other sets in Kogan's current UK range - including the 42-inch KULED42XHDAA, 46-inch KULED461HDAA and 32-inch LEDBD32, the latter of which has a built-in Blu-ray player - all use LED lighting too.

Basically, most things about the Kogan LED55 sound too good to be true.

Features

The Kogan LED55 isn't exactly the prettiest TV you'll ever see. But nor is it ugly - not by any stretch of the imagination.

Its bezel may be a little wider and more angular than most televisions, but the glossy black finish is decent enough. It feels a little 'squeaky' with its build quality during set up, but once it's positioned on its heavy-duty, crystal-finished stand, it looks robust enough.

Some budget TVs tend to forget that most people want a very slim TV these days. But here again the Kogan LED55 gently impresses, with its respectable depth of just 50mm (off its stand).

A quest for connections uncovers a minor but certainly not deal-breaking disappointment in the shape of three HDMI inputs rather than the four now commonly found on big flatscreen TVs.

But you also get some pretty handy compensation from a USB port and its ability to both play back AVI, MP4, DivX4, DivX5, XVID, MP3, WMA, JPEG and BMP files, and record broadcast programming to USB HDDs up to 1TB in size.

As usual, you shouldn't really consider such USB recording systems to be a replacement for a more heavy-duty recording option, but it's great for 'pausing live TV' or simple timeshifting.

There's also a D-Sub PC port for simple computer connection, and a LAN port to support the TV's integrated Freeview HD tuner. It's a pity that this LAN port can't also be used for either taking the TV online or accessing files stored on a networked PC. But then the Kogan LED55 does, after all, only cost £999.

As noted earlier, the Kogan LED55's screen specifications seem mostly quite promising - especially its use of Edge LED lighting rather than CCFL, and the presence of 100Hz processing to reduce potential motion blurring from the 6.5ms response time panel.

However, it's not all plain sailing on the spec front, because neither the claimed 320cd/m2 of brightness nor the maximum 40,000:1 claimed dynamic contrast ratio stack up very well against the sort of numbers routinely trotted out by the more established TV brands. Hopefully Kogan is just being more honest.

Heading into the TV's on-screen menus, it has to be said that there isn't a great deal going on. You get fairly perfunctory - though actually not horrifically calibrated - presets; a trio of colour temperature presets; multiple levels of noise reduction; and actually that's kind of it.

The only attempt to cater for enthusiasts is the presence of a fairly rudimentary colour adjustment system that enables you to adjust between 1 and 100 the levels of the red, green and blue colour elements.

This relative paucity of set up flexibility is really to be expected on such a cheap 55-inch TV, though. And in some ways the only truly aggravating absentee is a dedicated backlight control to accompany the basic brightness adjustment.

Picture quality

It probably won't shock you too much to hear that the Kogan LED55 is hardly a classic performer where picture quality is concerned. After all, lest you've forgotten, it does only cost £999 for a 55-inch Edge LED TV. But is the Kogan LED55 good enough for its money?

Let's start with the good news. First, the picture is surprisingly bright, certainly brighter than the claimed 320cd/m2 brightness figure would have led us to expect. More proof - as if it were needed - that manufacturers' quoted specs really aren't worth the paper they're printed on.

Colours are quite boldly portrayed as well, and combine with what appears - initially at least - to be a pretty satisfying black level response. This latter attribute is a real surprise, since it tends to be pretty much a given with cheap LCD TVs that black levels are average, at best.

Yet here, aside from occasional moments when very dark scenes seem to take on a slight bluish glow, black colours on the Kogan LED55 really do look quite black, with relatively minimal amounts of the usual low-contrast greyness.

It should be said here that you'll need to rein in the Kogan LED55's brightness setting quite considerably (as low as 30-40 on its 1-100 scale) to get the best black level response. But even with brightness this low, you're not left with a picture that's devoid of vibrancy and punch.

The Kogan LED55's motion handling is in some ways better than is typical with budget TVs, too - at least in the sense that the usual motion blur is only moderate rather than excessive.

Presumably this is down at least in part to the TV's 100Hz processing. However, this processing is also responsible for the Kogan LED55's single most aggravating flaw. Because while it might reduce motion blur, it also generates - especially when watching Blu-rays, oddly - some very obvious and distracting unwanted side-effects.

These include haloing around the edges of moving objects, flickering over fast-moving objects and general patches of shimmering and distortion.

Basically, the Kogan LED55's 100Hz engine is a bit of a mess. So you should just turn it off. Um, except you can't, because for some reason, Kogan has decided not to give you the option to deactivate it, so you're left with it on permanently, warts and all. This is a mistake.

Another issue with the Kogan LED55's pictures finds the backlight looking a bit inconsistent. All four corners of the screen, in particular, exhibit clear 'jets' of light creepage, unless you turn the brightness level right down to 30 or less. But there are other more subtle areas of inconsistency too.

Next to cause a little trouble are the Kogan LED55's colours. They're quite punchy, but they're not especially natural or subtle when it comes to portraying minute tonal shifts.

These issues are particularly apparent with skin tones, which look a bit yellowish or wan, as well as looking unnaturally smooth and monotone, with none of the subtle colour nuances and facial minutiae available that stop people looking like mannequins on better-specified TVs.

It doesn't help the skin tone issues, either, that the screen isn't particularly crisp when handling HD material. You can see a step up from standard definition pictures, but the step up isn't as pronounced as it ideally would be on a Full HD 55-inch LED TV. Ramping up the set's sharpness setting can improve the sense of crispness, but only at the expense of an increase in picture noise.

Very bright scenes, meanwhile, look a bit flared out at times, as if the screen can't resolve small differences in white tones.

Input lag measurements from the Kogan LED55 also fluctuate between a respectable 40ms and a disappointing 70ms, resulting in an average figure of 52ms that appeared to marginally reduce our Call of Duty skills.

Sound, value and ease of use

Sound quality

Although the Kogan LED55's carriage of SRS TruSurround processing is quite an eye-catching feature for a budget TV, it does, of course, still remain the case that the SRS system only works effectively if it's unleashed through a decently powerful speaker system.

And it's no great surprise to find the Kogan LED55 without enough audio heat to bring the SRS system - or a potent action film soundtrack - to life.

It must be stressed that it's not a shockingly bad sounding TV by any means, and it's able to cope reasonably cleanly with 'normal'-volume, daytime TV stuff. But it certainly sounds harsh and compressed - with too much treble emphasis - when put under any serious pressure.

Value

Value is tricky to judge, really. Clearly on the one hand £999 is remarkably cheap for a 55-inch Edge LED TV. But, on the other hand, there are a few ways in which you only get what you pay for with the Kogan LED55. Ultimately it's probably fair to say that the Kogan LED55's price is more or less right.

Ease of use

The Kogan LED55 is a bit of a mixed bag in this respect. On the upside, its on-screen menus, while certainly unusual in their presentation and design, are actually pretty straightforward to navigate. Part of this is down to the fact that none of the five sub-menus you can cycle through by pushing right on the remote actually have many features in.

But the no-nonsense, clear text and basic organisational principles are effective enough and should present no major challenges to even the most technophobic of television buyers.

The weak point where ease of use is concerned comes from the set's remote control. It's a deeply utilitarian affair, in that its layout and shape looks and feels like one of those universal remote designs commonly found with budget TVs in place of something that's in any way adapted to the TV's particular feature set and on-screen menu structure.

Some of the buttons are too small for comfort, too, but worst of all is how unresponsive the remote control is. It could be because its squishy buttons don't respond well enough to your presses or, more likely, because the cone of responsiveness of the IR receptor on the TV just isn't wide enough to pick up signals as readily as it should.

The result is much frustration, as time and again the TV fails to respond to remote commands at the first try, requiring you to lean forward or sideways to get your desired result.

It's worth adding, too, that you get no paper or CD manual with the Kogan LED55. Instead you just get a bit of paper with a link to an online PDF manual. This is eco-friendly and all that, but it's not necessarily convenient for everyone.

Verdict

It's a brave new brand indeed that tries to crack the UK TV marketplace right now. But Australian brand Kogan is having a pretty full-blooded stab at it, especially now that it's got a genuine flagship proposition on its hands in the shape of the Kogan LED55.

This 55-inch set is no ultra-basic lump of plastic, despite its low price. It's got a Freeview HD tuner, it uses Edge LED lighting, it's got a Full HD resolution, and it's even got 100Hz processing to help pictures out.

Its performance isn't the horror show that we might have expected for its money, either. Its contrast range and brightness in particular are good enough to render pictures perfectly watchable. But there are also enough problems to remind you that the set is, after all, a budget model.

We liked

The Kogan LED55 is remarkably affordable for a 55-inch LED TV, despite having a respectable core spec sheet. Its Freeview HD tuner is appreciated considering the TV's affordability, as is its facility for recording to USB drives. Black level response is better than usual for the budget world, too, and pictures are generally vibrant and dynamic.

We disliked

The Kogan LED55's 100Hz system is of a pretty low quality, causing obvious unwanted side-effects. And, annoyingly, you can't turn it off.

There are also backlight consistency problems unless you really slash the television's brightness output, and colour tones don't look especially natural or subtly toned. HD pictures don't look particularly crisp either, and skin tones tend to look plasticky and unrealistic.

Finally, while the TV's audio is mostly OK, loud scenes can start to sound quite shrill.

Final verdict

Kogan has certainly unleashed a startling statement of intent with its LED55. Its 55-inch size shows that the brand has the AV ambitions to take on the more established TV brand names, and its lowly price shows that it's prepared to appeal to our wallets.

Kogan has even managed to underline its raw 'big screen, small price' hook by giving the LED55 a few unexpected features, such as a Freeview HD tuner and 100Hz processing.

Perhaps inevitably, though, while it's better than expected in the contrast and brightness departments, the Kogan LED55 falls short of its more established rivals with its performance, thanks to some backlight consistency concerns and some troubling 100Hz processing that leaves obvious distracting side effects and can't be turned off.

In fact, this 100Hz problem is so frustrating that it ultimately led to the Kogan LED55 only ending up with an overall score of three stars rather than the three and a half it might otherwise have claimed.

Review: LG DoublePlay

John Brandon — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 22:29:00 GMT

Overview, design and feel

Differentiating yourself from the pack means making something spectacular…or just different. With the LG DoublePlay, a few radical hardware changes translate to an unusual, and sometimes more productive, experience.

The phone is perhaps most similar to the Kyocera Echo (or maybe even the Nintendo 3DS) but falls short of the amazing Samsung Google Nexus and Apple iPhone 4S which function as more traditional phones. At the very least, the DoublePlay tries something new.

The most unusual feature is the phone's two screens, one main 3.5-inch touchscreen running at 320 x 480p resolution and a second 2-inch, 240 x 320p screen.

The two-screen approach, like the 3DS or the Echo, lets you run an app in one screen and see app icons in another. Or, you can see your main Facebook page and chat with someone on the second screen.

As you can imagine, having two screens means putting up with some bulk. The phone weighs 192 grams, or about 50 grams heavier than the Galaxy Nexus. At 64mm thick, the DoublePlay feels like it could double as a hockey puck or maybe a doorstop. If thin is in, then LG didn't get the memo.

With its 1GHz processor, the DoublePlay is a bit behind the curve compared to the new crop of 1.2GHz and 1.5GHz phones that have added zip for games and browsing the Web. The phone is loaded with Android 2.3.4 Gingerbread and we kept missing the superior performance and usability of Android 4.0.

The 5-megapixel camera is also a bit behind the pack. At CES, we saw a bevy of phones with extremely high-res cameras, up to 16MP in some cases. The DoublePlay supports 720p video recording, but it is equally inadequate. The phone includes 2GB of internal memory, but if you need more space for your photos and videos, it supports up to 32GM microSD cards.

As for wireless connections, this is an HSPA+ phone running on T-Mobile in the US with a rated download speed of about 14.4Mbps. Real-world speeds were much lower, hovering around 3-4Mbps.

The phone supports Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0. Unlike an Android 4.0 phone, the DoublePlay does not work with the new Bluetooth Health Device Protocol (HDP) standard and does not have an NFC chip.

Further lessening its appeal, the DoublePlay comes equipped with a 1500 mAh battery is not quite capable of all-day functionality. The two screens definitely hamper the experience if all you care about is talking and texting. The phone is rated for just three hours of talk time.

In our own tests, the DoublePlay lasted for about six hours of normal use during the day. As with many recent Android phones, we installed the Juice Defender and were able to use the phone an entire day.

Alas, none of that is likely to matter if you're interested in the DoublePlay solely for its dual-screen functionality. We think only the most hardcore dual-screen users will appreciate the hardware design; other will miss a slimmer phone.

Interface

One of the main reasons to consider the LG DoublePlay is its appealing and unusual interface. Pull up the browser and you'll see thumbnail bookmarks for sites you've visited on the second screen. Use the Richnote app and you can create a new memo.

There are nine apps included like the Bobsled group messaging app, music and calendar apps, browser and social apps, and a photo app which all work with the DoublePlay's unique screens. Typically, the top screen displays a typical portion of the interface and extra controls are displayed in the lower screen.

The dual-screen setup is most effective for keeping tabs on things or multitasking. For example, LG includes the Sim City Deluxe game, so you can get engrossed in building a city on your phone but also run the messaging app on the secondary screen to reply to that message your boss sent you.

Unfortunately, this novelty wears thin quickly. The main problem is that there are only nine apps that work with the secondary screen, and there doesn't seem to be a plan to add more.

When you download the Evernote app or Skype, you won't be able to run part of these apps on the second screen and there's no way to find out which apps are supported shy of running each and seeing if the secondary screen does anything.

The confusion is exacerbated by having this blend of widgets and apps placed on the secondary screen. Many of the widgets, including one for social networks and for messaging, plus several others, do not work with the secondary screen once opened.

So, you might run the Friends social network widget and the social network app for the secondary screen, but they do not work in tandem. Oddly, the widget and secondary-screen apps often look alike, even if they do not work in concert.

Contacts and calling

Calling

Since the DoublePlay uses the older Android 2.3 Gingerbread operating system, you won't find any of the new and improved contact management tricks of Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. For example, when a call comes in, there isn't a slider that lets you send the caller a text message instead.

Despite an antiquated interface, the phone was loud and clear for most test calls, and the speakerphone was plenty loud.

The DoublePlay has the dreaded "taco phone" look when you make calls, due to the larger size and thickness. Imagine talking on the Nintendo DS as a phone and you will get the idea.

Contacts

We did like the quick responsiveness for searching contacts. You can press the search button to type a name, and once you do, a list of contacts and saved e-mail addresses appears almost instantaneously.

With a few other phones we've tested, including the Galaxy Nexus, there is sometimes a slight pause when searching. The Contacts app tended to load a bit slow, probably due to having 3000 Gmail contacts.

For each contact, you can view the history of your interactions. The phone also lets you add Twitter, Facebook, and other contacts for social networks and search for those as well.

Messaging

Messaging on the DoublePlay depends almost entirely on whether you prefer a split keyboard. Some computer users swear by them and can type faster when they have one section of the keyboard for each hand.

The DoublePlay is split in such a way that the 2-inch screen is located between the QWERTY keys. It feels a little weird, and initially our typing speed seemed to suffer a bit from the strange finger spacing. As with many physical keyboards, there's a learning curve, but eventually our typing speed actually improved.

If physical keyboards aren't your thing (and you somehow still end up with this phone) you can slip the keyboard closed and type using software keyboard, which we found were preferable to several higher quality phones (we're looking at you, Motorola Atrix 2).

The phone does use haptics for the soft keyboard, which is a plus for those who find the slight buzz sensation to be helpful. (On phones like the Atrix 2, the buzzing is a bit too pronounced.) We found typing on the DoublePlay software keyboard to be fluid and fast for most texting and e-mail chores.

LG includes the Bobsled group texting app which is works exactly like GroupMe. You can add contacts to a group, and then send group texts and store them in the cloud. Like GroupMe, you can load the Bobsled app on your tablet or even on a different phone to see your group texts elsewhere.

Messaging on the dual-screen DoublePlay does provide a good paradigm shift, though. You can load up the messaging app, type a Facebook status update, or even browse photos and music lists on the second screen while you browse the Web on the primary screen.

This helps in a rather select group of instances, but when it does, it almost validates the phone entirely.

Say you want to let someone know about an upcoming event or schedule change. You can look up what you need to know on the main screen with the browser, and then type in the message on the second screen, all without switching between apps.

Internet

Internet browsing on the LG DoublePlay is a bit of a saving grace. Besides the useful dual-tasking mentioned earlier, the phone's dual-screen setup just makes sense for web browsing.

It shows webpages on the main 3.5-inch screen, and a thumbnail of previously-visited sites on the secondary screen. You can flip through these thumbnails in a rotating preview that looks like a rolodex.

Sites like TechRadar.com and Google.com loaded quickly and formatted correctly.

We had occasional (and expected) Adobe Flash problems, but some sites, like TechRadar, worked without hitch.

The phone supports text re-flow for most sites and worked well on those sites we visited. Page zoom in and out worked fast and handled most sites for text and images well.

Camera

The DoublePlay offers just a 5MP camera, and the image quality isn't great. Snap a photo, and the DoublePlay produces a slightly blurred image lacking in color and detail. Pictures taken in outdoor sunlight look quite a deal better than inside, but neither were worth writing home about.

Bring the camera inside and the colors tend to look washed out and a bit dim. That's a problem when there are so many adequate cameras on smart phones - and the rift will just deepen now that phones like the HTC Titan II on the horizon.

Sunlight

Bright outdoor scenes looked better than indoor photos, but they still weren't fantastic.

Click here for full res version

Gameboard

Indoor shots, even with background lighting, looked dim and grey.

Click here for full res version

People

Some outdoor shots produced heavy noise - though at least part of this could be racked up to temperamental ultra-bright shooting conditions.

Click here for full res version

The LG DoublePlay has surprisingly few camera options on the software side. The scenes modes are paltry – basically, a few indoor and outdoor settings but nothing that made a huge difference.

Scenes mode provide a negligible value beyond the basic auto setting. There wasn't a huge difference between the auto mode and the sunlight mode for outdoor shots.

Click here for full res version

Fortunately, the shutter speed is reasonable. On the DoublePlay, the shutter is responsive and clicks almost instantly. Switching between modes is also faster than expected, which is helpful when you want to quickly switch over to video mode.

You can't tap the screen to focus on a subject, but you can enable a face tracking mode. There is also a Macro Focus mode (but not a Macro Scene mode which adjusts the focus and other settings).

Video

Video quality was also not up to snuff. The optics in the phone are also not exactly competitive with other phones, and videos in 1280x720 HD mode tended to look choppy, slightly pixelated, and often with dropped frames.

Light changes

The DoublePlay did switch reasonably well between an indoor lamp, outside scene, and then back to indoor lighting without too much fading and color changes.

YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcNhu7paXBs&feature=g-upl&context=G2657f0fAUAAAAAAAAAA

This typical outdoor scene, one of many we shot, is too choppy, as though the video was losing frames. The colors were accurate, though, and looked well lit.

YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YijmHqWl-U8&feature=g-upl&context=G2690a61AUAAAAAAACAA

Indoor video

Indoor videos did not exactly pop in terms of color vibrancy, but at least they looked better than the more choppy videos in an outdoor scene. Note the focus problem at a midpoint on the video.

YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kgLN-xCGqsE&feature=g-upl&context=G22c024bAUAAAAAAABAA

Like the still photo mode, there are few Scene Modes – only a handful for outdoor, sunlight, and night. That means you can't specifically set the video mode for things like a macro scene or candles at a birthday party like you can with a full pocket digital camera.

Media

With two screens, there is a great opportunity for innovative games ala the Nintendo DS, or watching a movie on one screen while keeping tabs on your e-mail in another, or just running a slideshow on one screen and music on another.

Unfortunately, none of those activities are possible. The DoublePlay only works with nine apps in dual-screen mode, and none of them are directly related to media consumption.

Another surprise is that there is no front-facing camera on the DoublePlay, which seems like a necessity in today's day and age.

Like we mentioned, the phone supports up to 32GB microSD cards, which is helpful since the phone only has 2GB of internal memory. The slot for the flash cards is easily accessible inside the back cover.

Oddly, LG does not provide a music widget you can drop onto the 3.5-inch main screen, though there is an app for the secondary screen that allows you to control your music. Sound quality is average – not distorted, but not loud enough. The phone supports most common music formats like MP3, AAC, WAV, and WMA and all formats worked properly.

The display is small enough to make watching videos feel a bit lackluster. The DoublePlay supports MPEG4 and H.264/H.263 for video and played both smoothly. LG includes the DoubleTwist app for syncing media.

There's no built-in app for renting movies or TV shows, but you can play videos using the YouTube app or load them as MPEG4 files onto the device. The phone is DLNA-compatible for streaming media to set-top boxes and video game consoles and supports FM radio.

Battery life and connectivity

Battery Life

Due to a relatively small 1500 mAh battery and the need to light up two displays, battery life wasn't great. The talk time rating of three hours is fairly typical, but using the phone for everyday use (browsing the Web occasionally, checking e-mail, and sending text messages) only netted around six hours of usage.

You can extend the battery life using an app like Juice Defender, which disables the 4G connection for background usage. (To enable the connection, you just tap an option for short-term usage.)

Connectivity

While plenty of phones are still rocking Gingerbread, we couldn't help but think of all the ways the DoublePlay could have benefited from it. Being stuck on Gingerbread means Android Beam is not available - a tool that lets you send YouTube video links, Web site bookmarks, and your contacts by tapping phones together.

The DoublePlay does support Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 3.0, but doesn't support Bluetooth 4.0, the new standard that uses lower power transmissions. The DoublePlay also does not support Bluetooth HDP, the new standard included with ICS that lets you connect to heart rate monitors, step counters, and workout machines at the gym.

The phone works with the T-Mobile 4G network in the US for theoretical speeds of about 14.4Mbps, but a real-world throughput of more like 3-4Mbps. (The speed of your connection depends greatly on where you are, other users who are connected, et al.)

Maps and Apps

Maps

LG comes packed with the usual Gingerbread Google Maps, which functions similar to how it has in the past. Google Maps comes complete with voice guided turn-by-turn directions.

The DoublePlay also comes loaded with the TeleNav GPS app for mapping. Though it'll eventually cost you an additional $2.99 a month, and we can't think of any compelling reasons to use it isntead of Google Maps. We'd rack this one up as bloatware.

Apps

It's not the only bloatware on the phone, either. For the most part, the included apps aren't meaningless - they just provide services that other, free-er apps provide better. For instance, if you already use the The Kindle app or Google books for reading, you might not need the Blio app.

But it's not all junk - the phone includes the Lookout security app for finding a stolen phone, scanning for malware, and backing up data. There's a Wi-Fi Calling app you can use that does not use up your minutes for voice calls.

Other included apps of use include the world famous Sim City Deluxe and Tetris, as well as the Slacker radio app, the DoubelTwist music app, Zinio, Polaris Office, and the Bobsled group-texting app. Polaris Office is a good option for viewing Microsoft Office apps, which might mean you won't need to purchase Quickoffice for your mobile Office related needs.

Verdict

The LG DoublePlay is a unique phone that, if nothing else, tries to do something different. When it works, the dual-screens let you multitask at an unprecedented and entirely awesome pace.

Unfortunately, its uses are so sparse, that the novelty of the DoublePlay starts to wear thin, quickly. The phone is quite a bit too big and bulky, so everyday tasks like making calls and browsing the Web become too cumbersome.

We liked

The dual-screen does afford some extra functionality – namely, texting or taking notes on the small screen while you perform other tasks on the main screen. And when you're done using the physical keyboard, it's handy being able to slide up the phone keyboard and use the virtual keyboard.

Apps generally ran fast, and we had no problems visiting sites (except a few that buckled under their own large Flash animations).

We disliked

The LG DoublePlay felt bulky and heavy by the end of the day. The battery can't match the longevity of comparable models.

The camera did not provide enough clarity for photos or video, and did not include enough settings to fake good picture-taking.

Typing on the split-screen was a bit cumbersome and, perhaps most unforgivable of all, the small display frequently had no functionality in conjunction with apps. There was no way to know what was supported, aside from opening each app.

Verdict

The LG DoublePlay gets extra points for doing something almost entirely different. For some, the second screen will be a productive aid.

However, at the end of the day the second screen feels more like a mistake than a revolution, and as an everyday phone, the DoublePlay just doesn't cut it.

It's too bulky, too unintuitive, and too low-tech to be anything besides a gimmick.

Review: HP Envy 14 Spectre

Jeff Parsons — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:30:00 GMT

Overview

The HP Envy 14 Spectre is the latest and best-named Ultrabook to hit the shelves, and with the combined draw of HP's premium Envy range, and Dr Dre's urban cool Beats brand, it's going to be very hard to ignore.

We're well into the Ultrabook race by now and we've already been impressed by the Asus Zenbook UX31, Acer Aspire S3 and most recently by the Dell XPS 13, perhaps the toughest rival that the HP Envy 14 Spectre faces in the battle for our hard-earned pennies.

And HP's newest baby is taking an interesting approach to the competition by being less concerned with a size zero frame. The HP Envy 14 Spectre is 20mm thin, and weighs 1.8kg - hefty for an Ultrabook.

But the slight bulk enables it to throw around some extra connectivity and features that other Ultrabooks, perhaps save the Toshiba Satellite Z830, can't match.

Of course, before we start dreamily idolising this shiny new offering, there are a couple of points that need to be looked at. Firstly, the fact that the HP is built around an Intel Core i5-2467M processor, rather than the Core i7 CPUs on offer inside the likes of the Dell and Acer mean that for all its bulk, the Spectre lacks power.

You might also be forgiven for thinking that this lower-spec processor will have a pleasing effect on the price of the computer. Not so.

The HP Envy 14 Spectre costs a sphincter-tightening £1,100 in the UK, and $1,400 in the US. That's a clear £200 more expensive than the Dell, and in these hardened times; a penny saved is a penny earned... or something.

But before you click away in disgust, there are a number of excellent features that the HP Envy 14 Spectre has to offer, and we have to say that it's one of the best-looking Ultrabooks we've yet seen. Clearly a lot of time and effort has gone into its design and development.

Specifications

Shunning the aluminium silver outer design favoured by other Ultrabooks such as the Dell XPS 13 or the Acer Aspire S3, the HP Envy 14 Spectre boasts a black Gorilla Glass lid with a slick, glossy finish. Adding the final touch is the bright HP logo nestled in the corner.

Although it looks great, the inevitable downside is that the surface of the lid will quickly attract dust and smudgy fingerprints - more so than any other Ultrabook we've seen.

A backlit, isolation-style keyboard lurks underneath, and is one of the most comfortable we've used on an Ultrabook. The greater depth of the chassis gives a better travel to the keys, and the result is comfy typing all day long.

A neat trick is the ability of the keyboard to sense your proximity, and dim itself when you move away from the laptop, saving power.

Of course, any discussion of the Spectre's features starts and ends with the Beats audio. The speakers do a decent job of producing a rich, full sound - but slap a pair of Beats headphones on and you're ready to experience the best sound we've heard from an Ultrabook since the Bang & Olufsen-packing Asus Zenbook UX31.

Anyone who has used any of HP's other laptops, including the Envy and Pavilion ranges, will be at home with the extra choice Beats gives you.

You can open up a control panel to tweak all aspects of the Envy 14 Spectre's audio performance. There are also several bonus modes to take advantage of, such as noise and echo cancellation.

The HP Envy 14 Spectre also features a small Beats-branded clickwheel on the chassis that enables you to quickly alter the volume of the speakers.

Arguably, the HP Envy 14 Spectre's 14-inch screen should get as much praise as the Beats audio. The 1600 x 900 pixel resolution is a step up from other Ultrabooks such as the Lenovo IdeaPad U300S, and we marvelled at the crystal clear high-definition visuals.

Not only that, but the HP Envy 14 Spectre has a tiny bezel, allowing the 14-inch screen to sit nicely inside a 13.3-inch chassis.

Performance

TechRadar Labs

Cinebench 10: 7, 336
3D Mark '06: 3, 377
Battery Eater '05: 206 minutes

Ultrabooks are all members of the Sandy Bridge family, and the HP Envy 14 Spectre is built around an Intel Core i5-2467M CPU operating at 1.60GHz and 4GB RAM.

It's not the fastest or highest-spec chip we've seen in an Ultrabook, and rivals will triumph on raw power. This is reflected in the Cinebench scores we recorded, in which the Spectre posted less than rivals including the Acer Aspire S3.

But general day-to-day use is unaffected, and the HP Envy 14 Spectre kept up with our multitasking needs. In part a justification for the higher price tag is that both Adobe's Premier Elements and Photoshop Elements editing suites come preinstalled, and ran perfectly when we tried a spot of on-the-fly photo editing.

Unfortunately, though, we had a lot of problems with the trackpad. It was responsive enough when moving the cursor, but the integrated mouse buttons were a pain to use. We appreciate the nicer look of integrated buttons, but the irritation of repeated clicks to select and execute slightly tarnishes the overall experience.

Although the HP Envy 14 Spectre can cope with the demanding graphical performance of video editing, or running several intensive websites at once, don't buy this expecting a gaming platform.

The integrated GPU is powerful enough, thanks to the Sandy Bridge heritage, but it won't be boasting the latest Assassin's Creed title.

We don't know what the thought process was behind naming this laptop the Spectre, but it could be to do with the almost silent way in which it goes about its business, thanks to the SSD drive and its lack of moving parts.

The Spectre remained cool to the touch during operation and, like other Ultrabooks, is available with either a 256GB or 128GB SSD internal hard drive.

According to HP, the Envy 14 Spectre will offer you a reasonable nine hours of battery life. We ran our high-stress benchmarking tests and recorded an impressive score of 206 minutes.

Avoid our brute force attack on the battery and you should have no trouble getting through a day without the company of the AC adaptor. Just keep the volume down.

Verdict

We see the HP Envy 14 Spectre as being the 'cool kid' of the Ultrabook class, with its Beats audio branding, high resolution 14-inch screen and Gorilla Glass casing. It's a highly usable laptop, with only the integrated click buttons on the touchpad giving us grief.

We liked

At first, we had worries about the slightly chunkier casing, but this was tempered by the joy we felt when we spotted the HDMI port and Ethernet port that HP has included on the chassis. We've lamented the lack of connectivity on other Ultrabooks, and having the option for a wired internet connection and the use of an external monitor is music to our ears.

On the subject of music, this is undoubtedly the Ultrabook for media enthusiasts. The screen is gloriously crisp and the extra audio technology on board gives you options to tweak and alter the sound to get your albums sounding the way you want. Invest in a decent pair of headphones or an amplifier and you can make this your sole media machine.

We disliked

Ultrabooks are meant to be light, airy and portable computers. By any other laptop standards, the HP Envy 14 Spectre is a classy ultra-portable. But, when you put it up against the other Ultrabooks, it's inescapably bulky.

It just comes in under the weight limit set out in Intel's specifications for Ultrabooks, and business users might be more swayed by the svelt curves of the Dell XPS 13 or the functionality of the Toshiba Satellite Z830.

We also got increasingly frustrated with the integrated click buttons on the touchpad. We know the overall effect is a nicer aesthetic, but unfortunately the usability suffers as a result. Often we would just rely on the double-tap to select files and launch programs instead.

Final verdict

We're deep into the second round of Ultrabook releases by now, and we feel the HP Envy 14 Spectre sits alongside the Dell XPS 13 at the top of the heap. But these are two different machines with different focuses.

The HP Envy 14 Spectre is the most media-centred Ultrabook, with a larger 14-inch screen, 1600 x 900 pixel resolution and Beats audio technology. But it won't win over fans looking for performance and portability, due to the lower spec processor and bulky Gorilla Glass chassis.

If you can overcome the steep asking price then the HP Envy 14 Spectre is a well-built and stylish way to transport and enjoy your music, movies and do a spot of image editing.

Review: GigaRunner USB remote access drive

Matt Hanson — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 09:30:00 GMT

The capacity of USB flash drives has risen steeply, with 16GB becoming common place. The GigaRunner might seem small at 4GB, but this drive has some network-enabled tricks up its sleeve.

Most of us have hard drives 500GB or more these days, so while we might be able to fit a lot of our important files and folders on a flash drive, the ideal of having access to any of our files from another system is still a distant one.

Of course, there's cloud backup and synchronisation services but if you're after anything more than 20GB of space things start getting expensive.

The GigaRunner's 4GB space isn't much to write home about but it's the GigaRunner software which is really interesting. After a quick setup, creating a server on our main PC, we were able to plug the USB stick into another PC and browse and download any file from our main rig.

It worked really well, and the interface made it easy to navigate files and folders from our remote computer.

Files you download and then edit can't be uploaded back onto your main PC. This is where the 4GB capacity comes into play.

Another drawback is that your main PC needs to be constantly on and connected to the internet.

Review: PS Vita

Leon Hurley — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 12:48:00 GMT

Overview

Sony's latest attempt to lift a slice of the handheld pie so ably scoffed by Nintendo is the PS Vita: a chunky black slab of portable PlayStation. So here we have our full-blown PlayStation Vita review.

It's a substantial revamp of the company's handheld legacy that started with the PSP and has evolved, until now, through five largely identical models since its 2004 debut.

Each step saw minor revisions - three of which, the PSP-1000, 2000 and 3000, were basically size revising updates - and attempts to chase a rapidly changing market.

The PSP Go added a sliding-case design further shrinking the device, and ditched Sony's original proprietary UMD disk format in favor of download only software.

Even now the original device is lives on with the latest PSP, the E1000, undergoing a budget focused strip down with a cheaper build and removing all but the most basic features to squeeze the last out of it as a piece of (almost) throw away fun.

In many ways, despite the new name, the PS Vita is another revision of the PSP legacy but one with plenty of much needed evolution. The same basic form returns and it's still a dedicated games machine. If you want a PlayStation Phone then you'll need the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, an Android based device that can play Android games and PS1 titles.

The PlayStation Vita does have wireless options, with one of the models sporting a 3G connection but it's for updates and online gaming rather than communication.

The lesser model uses WiFi for the same functionality, and at a cheaper price: the 3G PS Vita will set you back £279 while the WiFi one will cost £229 when the console is released on February the 22nd. Shop around though as there are plenty of deals and trade ins to be had.

The PSP sold well but suffered from a lack of star software and focus. There were no essential games, and it's multimedia abilities, by SCEE's own president and CEO Jim Ryan's admission, "confused consumers".

This time the PS Vita is aimed squarely at gaming. The multimedia functionality is still there (and with a 5-inch OLED screen it has the potential to rival most smart phones and even dedicated media players) but the marketing and message is clear: this is a games machine.

It's even got a certified killer app with Uncharted: Golden Abyss proving that this is a full fat gaming experience, capable of providing PS3 quality fun on the go.

The real revolution however comes through the control options. First up there are dual analogue sticks that let you play exactly the same games, and in exactly the same way, as you would on your PS3 or Xbox 360. Something that now seems essential for gaming on whatever platform and demonstrated clearly by the persistence of dual stick controls on iOS games, and the slightly embarrassing admission/compromise of the Circle Pad for 3DS.

Then there are the extras: the twin front and back touchscreens, the motion control (using a three-axis gyroscope and three-axis accelerometer sensors) a microphone and dual cameras. There are uses for all of them with high profile touchy, wavy and visual gameplay mechanics across the launch line up.

Initial impressions are that this is what PSP wanted to be: a real portable PlayStation. Neither a phone nor a tablet but a fully formed, uncompressed gaming console you can throw in your bag.

Features

There's no denying that there's some impressive grunt inside the PS Vita's black plastic case.

The combination of the Quad-core ARM Cortex-A9 MPCore CPU and PowerVR Series5XT SGXMP+ quad core graphics chip mean that this is running near PS3 quality games, helped along by the 512 MB RAM and a separate 128 MB of VRAM.

A game like Uncharted: Golden Abyss is a clear system seller largely because it looks ostensibly like the original game on PS3.

There is no sense of any lowering of aesthetic standards that you might get on 3DS or iPhone. Visually this is competing on a PS3/Xbox 360 level with the same advanced rendering capabilities and dynamic lighting. Although frame rates can dip when a lots happening it's still and impressive leap forwards for handheld gaming.

The standout feature is its 960 × 540 qHD resolution OLED screen. At 5-inches it's a bright and sharp joy to watch, despite its being a touch down the resolution and pixel density ladder from an iPhone 4S' 640×960 screen which rocks 326ppi over the Vita's 220ppi.

It's also a capacitive touchscreen which is used in games and navigation, while there's a second touch pad on the rear of the machine, used almost exclusively for gaming inputs.

The other control mechanisms are an arrangement of buttons and sticks familiar to anyone who's ever picked up a PS3 Dualshock (there's no haptic feedback, mind). The triangle, square, cross and circle buttons sit on the right of the machine, the D-pad on the left. There's also a home button to navigate between open apps, and separate start and selection buttons.

You've also got three-axis accelerometer and gyroscope, meaning you can control your games simply by moving the device in your hand.

This enables you to aim simply by moving the device around - great for games like Uncharted though if you're sitting down you might need a swivel chair!

On the top of the machine are the triggers, a power and volume control as well as two ports. One for game cards, the other is an accessory port. The Vita SD storage card slots in at bottom and a standard sized sim used by the 3G model pops in the left hand side.

One odd form factor is that the machine is slightly too wide for easy typing. The on-screen keyboard is a good size and responsive but the width of the machine means that in a natural holding position your thumbs can't reach the middle. As a result you either have to use a slightly stretched grip or resort to single digit stabbing.

As well as capable stereo speakers there's a headphone jack and microphone for use both in game and with applications like Party, a cross game chat system that lets you communicate with others on your PSN friends list.

There are also front and rear cameras. They're both 640x480, 0.3MP VGA level devices so while classy photography isn't really an option they're serviceable enough for communication and use in games. The AR Reality Fighters uses them to put your face on a characters and to project that character in to the real world, for example.

One criminal drawback is the lack of internal memory. You'll have to fork out for Sony's proprietary Vita memory cards, essentially a tweaked SD card. Games come on their own cartridge-style cards with storage space for saves and update so if you're only gaming it's less of a concern. However, if you want to take music, picture or videos with you you'll have to pay extra for the Vita specific cards. There are a range of sizes planned from 2-16GB.

Connection-wise both models come with standard Bluetooth and WiFi connections while the 3G model also includes, well a 3G connection.

In the EU that's provided by Vodaphone, and the £279 price tag includes a free 4GB memory card, a PAYG SIM card which when topped up with £5 will get you a free downloadable game - WipEout 2048 - and 250 MB of data lasting up to 30 days with full Vodafone 3G connectivity.

The PlayStation Vita 3G will also be available at other high street and online retailers with the option to top up £5 and get the WipEout 2048 game free of charge.

Gaming

As previously mentioned gaming on the Vita looks incredible. After all the talk of CPUs and GPUs, the key thing is that games look every bit as good as their larger console counterparts.

Uncharted: Golden Abyss really does look as good as any launch PS3 game and better, even, than a handful of more recent console games. Visually it blows the iPad/Phone and Nintendo 3DS out of the water.

Because these are more akin to full size console games there are also equivalent full size loading times. You can get back into any game you've left running in the background almost instantly but firing up something like Uncharted from scratch can take a couple minutes.

Battery life

Gaming also takes it out of the machine's battery, though it's actually not too bad considering the processors and screen. Play something constantly with a sensible screen brightness and you'll get about four and half to five hours out of it. So, okay for short trips but best to keep the charger in your bag, a habit i-devices have ingrained into most of us by now anyway.

Loading and battery concerns aside the quality of the entertainment on offer is strong.

Wipeout 2048's futuristic racing looks beautiful with sharp, detailed environments blasting past as you compete. It's also one of the games to utilise cross play, letting you play against PS3 opponents on certain Wipeout tracks.

Then there's something like Escape Plan. It has a dark children's cartoon feel as you guide little claymation flavoured characters past a series of slicing, electrocuting death traps. What stops it becoming a simple 2.5D platform puzzler is its lovely, characterful animation and touch controls that have you jabbing and swiping at the screen. You can even 'pinch' the little heroes using the front and rear pad together to make them run.

Nearly all the games on offer make intelligent use of the varied controls options. Uncharted uses motion controlled sniping and gesture-based QTE's in combat. It's also got by far the best use of touch controls to show off your new toy. When Nate's climbing rock faces you can 'draw' over the available handholds and ledges. He'll then scramble across the path.

Trying to hit an entire route in one sweep actually becomes a satisfying meta-game in it's own right. There's also the ability to scale ropes by stroking your fingers in a climbing motion on the rear touchpad; something that always makes an onlooker smile.

Then there are the games built around the new controls. Little Deviants is a series of party games - variants on Whac-a-mole games, ball rolling challenges, motions controlled shooters and more - that has you stabbing at the screen and waving the entire machine around you.

Similarly Frobisher Says is a Bishi Bashi Special style assortment of madness as you race through challenges that last seconds - counting the number of cats that appear on screen for a fraction of a second, say. It's numerous instructions are yelled out by a manic Kevin Eldon creating a genuinely funny if short lived experience.

There are also more traditional offerings. Games like Unit 13 is a fairly traditional third person military shooter, and as such has little use for the extra control methods. Instead it makes logical use of them by letting you tap on screen to select options and change weapons.

There's a good number of titles as well. At launch 25 games will be available with another ten in the 'launch window', basically the week or two after the Vita goes on sale on February 22nd.

It's a wide range as well with everything from more 'hardcore offerings like Unit 13, Uncharted: Golden Abyss and Ninja Gaiden, though to more casual offerings like Plants vs Zombies and Motorstorm RC. Sports fans get things like FIFA, Hot Shots Golf and F1. Plus there are kid friendly titles like Ben Ten and Lego Harry Potter.

The PS Vita also carries a full-blown PSP emulator so you'll be able to fire up almost any PSP titles without a problem.

In Japan, Sony operates a UMD Passport scheme, allowing Vita gamers to download digital copies of any PSP title they already own without any extra fee. However, it is unclear whether this service will be available in the UK. If it's not, it would mean that PSP titles would need to be re-purchased - but we'll bring you an update on this as soon as we know more.

Functionality

The PS Vita is a simple device to use. You swipe up and down through pages of apps and games that appear as little floating Smartie like buttons. Anything you have open, Apps, games and media, stack up on a series of pages you can scroll through left to right, or shut down by 'tearing' the page off.

It's an intuitive and tactile system with buttons wobbling and the screen stretching and warping gently as you interact with it. It's easy to see why Sony chose to forgo the PlayStation XMB they'd previously rolled out across various TVs, cameras and other areas of their electronics division.

In terms of apps on the console there are currently things like Near, a location-based service much like Nintendo's Street Pass system. It collects information from the area, people and games around you. Party is the previously mentioned chat system and there's also a Group Messaging app.

The Vita specific PlayStation Store isn't yet up so there's no way yet of knowing what the full range of additional applications will be in Europe. Things like Facebook, Flickr, Skype, Twitter and foursquare are on the way, though, through Social Essentials - Vita's take on social networking.

While the media side of things have been played down, the PS Vita does do it all. Whatever you want to use can be transferred to and from the machine directly on the PS3. Through PC you can easily use Sony's propitiatory Content Manager Assistant which lets you set folders for images, music and video as well as back up your device. Or you can just use the device like a portable harddrive.

The apps that let you view or use your media are all easy to use, although browsing could be better - when you've got a lot of content it's a slow old slog to scroll though it all and the scroll bar is more for decoration than any practical use.

These are the currently supported media formats. The Vita focuses on the more commonly used ones but it's worth bearing in mind that PS3 added extra formats to it's original line up though post release firmware updates

Music: MP3 MPEG-1/2 Audio Layer 3, MPEG-4 AAC, WAVE (Linear PCM)

Video: MPEG-4 Simple Profile (AAC), H.264/MPEG-4 AVC Hi/Main/Baseline Profile (AAC)

Photo: JPEG (Exif 2.2.1), TIFF, BMP, GIF, PNG

One area that does need serious attention is the almost unusable browser. There's currently no support for Flash or HTML5 with the machine only getting friendly with the bare minimum of Javascript and cookies. There are serious and basic functionality issues eitherway, however.

There's no ability to re-orientate the screen, leaving you with a letterbox view that only loads what is visible. Attempts to scroll through sites simply reveals a blank screen as you wait for the Vita to catch up.

There's also a remote play feature, which allows you to use the Vita to take control of your PS3. In theory this means you can play PS3 games on the PS Vita over a network. Some titles work already though many don't, and Sony is keeping its cards close to its chest about how functional the Remote Play feature will be moving forward.

Verdict

This is fitting of the original PSP2 tag that it earned early on in its life.

It improves on the PSP in almost every way, adding the dual sticks that developers can't do without, as well as the touchscreens and motion controls of other gaming systems. Still, it does feel like a reaction, rather than an innovation.

There's nothing new or revolutionary, simply another means to play games and watch movies.

We liked:

As a portable console this is about as good as it gets. This really is a portable PlayStation and lets you ditch Temple Run in favor of full sized, big budget games.

Both the graphical capabilities and the screen make for a luxury mobile experience while the controls combine the best of traditional and more creative inputs, enhancing but never detracting from the gameplay.

The price, too, is fair. Other high-end mobile devices cost far more, and while £230 isn't exactly pocket money, it's still a heavily subsidised console.

We disliked:

The web browser really is awful. Blank sections of screen, juddery loading and lacking features, it might as well not be there for all the use you'll get out of it.

The size of the machine also makes it a little unwieldy to use the way it's meant to be held: if your thumbs fall naturally on the sticks then reaching the middle of the screen is uncomfortable and vice versa.

Verdict:

Before you decide to 'go Vita' you need to be sure about what hole you're hoping to fill. If it's mainly games on the go then knock yourself out. It mixes the best of everything out there with games that are PS3/Xbox quality right down to Angry Birds level bits of fluff.

The controls, both traditional sticks and the motion and touch stuff, are all great.

It's also a capable media player with the various social apps also looking promising. But this is really a games machine and should be viewed for purchase as such. It won't worry more versatile i-Things, tablets or media players anytime soon but if you want fun first, and a few other features second then it's worth investigating.

Review: OCUK Ultima 9450i Mosasaur MKII

Dave James — Tue, 07 Feb 2012 09:30:00 GMT

When you see a £2,200 PC in these post-X79 days, you might assume we're talking about a Sandy Bridge E-based machine with a £1,000 CPU at its heart.

But no, what we have here is the OCUK Ultima 9450i Mosasaur MKII, a good ol' fashioned straight Sandy Bridge machine with the perfect PC gaming chip thrumming away inside: the Core i7 2700K.

So why the vast price tag considering this top-end Sandy Bridge chip is available for a relatively bargainous £257?

Well, that has less to do with the processing power of this PC and everything to do with the twin graphics power-houses hurling pixels and polygons around inside.

Pairing up two of the fastest single-GPU graphics cards in this beast of a CrossFireX setup accounts for nearly half of its price. A single HIS Radeon HD 7970 costs £500. That makes a staggering £1,000 worth of graphical prowess at your fingertips.

CrossFire fun

As a single upgrade, we've been a bit down on the HD 7970 for not being quite the new AMD dawn we'd hoped for. Yes, it's a fair chunk faster than its predecessor and speedier than the previous fastest single-GPU card, Nvidia's GTX 580, but not really by the extra £150 you'll have to pay for the privilege.

Over the last few months we've actually seen a lot of high-end, high-price rigs. This is surprising given the current state of the global economy. Still, Intel's tippy-toppest desktop chipset has rocked up, ably supported by AMD's HD 7970, both of which are pricey ol' beasties.

This has given rise to some severe rigs in the £2-4K range, and this Ultima Mosasaur MKII is one of the best – even compared to the likes of the twin GTX 590-sporting, £4,000-costing Palicomp Phoenix Inferno Redline.

TechRadar Labs

CPU rendering performance
Cinebench R11.5: Index score: Higher is better
Ultima Mosasaur MKII: 8.95
CyberPower Liquid Xtreme GT: 13.01
YOYOTech XDNA Platinum: 12.69

DirectX 11 tessellation performance
Heaven 2.5: Index score: Higher is better
Ultima Mosasaur MKII: 53
CyberPower Liquid Xtreme GT: 22
YOYOTech XDNA Platinum: 43

DirectX 11 gaming performance
Metro 2033: Frames per second: Higher is better
Ultima Mosasaur MKII: 33
CyberPower Liquid Xtreme GT: 15
YOYOTech XDNA Platinum: 13

Despite having a slightly higher clocked i7 2600K and four Nvidia GPUs humming away inside, the Phoenix isn't far ahead of this Overclockers rig, which costs almost half as much.

We also chose to test its silicon against the DX10 Just Cause 2 benchmark and the twin HD 7970s actually come out on top of the twin GTX 590s, with the AMD setup hitting 97fps at 2,560x1,600 and the Nvidia just managing 86fps.

The CPU performance is inevitably off the pace against the X79-based machines but, in terms of gaming, even the SLI GTX 580 setup of the £2,500 YOYOTech XDNA Platinum is put in its place.

There are always caveats though, and here it's the constant spectre of CrossFire drivers working with new games and new hardware. For the most part, the HD 7970 drivers worked fine, but no matter what we tried we couldn't get reasonable results from Crysis 2. In fact it came in slower than a single HD 7970.

That little aside, er, aside, this is one hell of a gaming rig. With just a single HD 7970 it would still be a good machine, and a shade under £1,700 isn't a bad price.

However, if you're going to spend that much on a PC, why not go the whole graphical warthog? These things in CrossFire are simply blinding.

Review: Intel SSD 520 Series 240GB

Jeremy Laird — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:00:00 GMT

Overview

Intel is looking to SandForce to provide it with a performance-class SSD in the Intel SSD 520 Series 240GB.

It changed tack about a year ago and started using third-party controller chips in its consumer class solid state drives (SSDs). From that moment on, it was almost inevitable that a SandForce-powered Intel drive would eventually appear.

With the launch of the new Intel SSD 520 Series 240GB, and the other members of the 520 family, that day has finally come.

Of course, SandForce SSD controllers aren't perfect.

Thanks to the use of aggressive compression technology, impressive headline data transfer rates can sometimes translate into slightly pedestrian real-world performance. What's more, SandForce's second generation of controller chips suffered from a few stability glitches early on.

Still, there's no doubting the popularity, success and strong, all round performance of SSDs based on the latest SandForce controller. Add in Intel's reputation for going the extra mile with SSD firmware quality control and validation and you have a very promising mix.

The task for the Intel SSD 520 Series 240GB is clear enough. Not only must it rise above the hordes of SandForce based drives, it must also take on the new pretender in the form of the OCZ Octane and its refreshed Indilinx controller.

Game on.

Benchmarks

SSD performance is more multi-discipline decathlon than single-distance time trial.

A drive that delivers impressive peak performance doesn't always deliver the goods in random access workloads, for instance. Intel says it's put a lot of work into tuning the SandForce SF-2281 controller to improve performance and reliability.

But the results aren't always obvious in our benchmark tests.

Synthetic drive performance, compressible data

Synthetic drive performance, incompressible data

Synthetic drive performance, 4K Random

Application performance

Verdict

For the most part, Intel's new desktop SSD looks like any other drive based on the SandForce SF2281 controller chipset.

Not that we're suggesting that's a bad thing.

Sequential read and write speeds of 550MB/s and 520MB/s courtesy of a SATA 6Gbps interface is about as good as it gets for a single desktop SSD.

A peak IOPS rating of 80,000 for writes is pretty much par for the second-gen SandForce course, too.

So Intel isn't making any showbiz claims for basic performance.

In fact, if anything it's more up front about the limitations of the drive when it comes to shunting incompressible data around. In practice that includes most really big files, such as video, music and images.

Intel is also happy to 'fess up to the fact that the peak IOPS speed relates to a completely box-fresh drive. It only rates the Intel SSD 520 Series 240GB at a maximum of 60,000 IOPS in normal use.

However, what Intel does have is an enviable reputation for exhaustive validation and quality control when it comes to SSDs.

In fact, it's rumoured the 520 Series has arrived later than expected due to that very validation process. The upshot of all this, however, is not a drive than immediately blows away the competition for raw performance.

All our synthetic tests reveal an SSD that's very similar in performance to other SandForce-based drives. So that means a generally pretty fantastic performance with the exception of slightly ordinary incompressible data write performance.

We liked

It's not perfect, but SandForce's SF-2281 SSD controller is probably our current favourite.

It routinely wins a lot of benchmarks and is never too far behind even when it isn't at its best.

Add in Intel's hardcore validation and you have the promise of speed combined with longevity.

We disliked

If you were expecting something special in terms of raw performance, you'll be disappointed.

The 520 Series is very similar to other SandForce powered SSDs. And that means only ordinary performance in incompressible writes.

Like any large SSD, it's pricey, too.

Verdict

Probably the pick of the currently available 250GB-ish SSDs. Just a shame it's not a bit cheaper.

Review: Intel SSD 520 Series 120GB

Jeremy Laird — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 16:00:00 GMT

Overview

The 120GB could be the SSD sweet-spot, but can Intel's SSD 520 Series 120GB drive hit that head-on?

Intel has done the obvious thing and stuck a SandForce controller in its desktop SSDs.

If the larger members of the new 520 Series, like the Intel SSD 520 240GB, are a little punitive on pricing, what about the Intel SSD 520 Series 120GB, could it offer the best compromise between price, performance and capacity?

One thing it certainly shares with the larger 520 Series solid state drive is Intel's SSD firmware development and validation regime.

It will take time for the true long-term performance of this latest Intel SSD family to shake out, but Intel has a well-earned reputation in this area.

The only slight snag is that smaller drives make for fewer memory chips and in turn fewer memory channels and a little less performance.

The optimal drive for performance in the range is the Intel SSD 520 Series 240GB model. But that's a much more expensive drive.

Instead this 120GB drive must do battle with the likes of the Corsair Force GT 120GB and OCZ's Vertex 3 120GB.

Benchmarks

Long term performance is the big worry with SSDs.

Early drives delivered scorching performance out of the box, but quickly went down the pan with intensive usage. To simulate a used drive, we install Windows 7 and then stuff each SSD full of data.

This used to be enough to make SSDs suffer slow downs. More recent SSDs are much more resilient and Intel's SSDs in particular have a strong reputation for excellent longevity.

As our benchmarks show, however, it's not hugely remarkable in terms of raw performance

Synthetic drive performance, compressible data

Synthetic drive performance, incompressible data

Synthetic drive performance, 4K Random

Application performance

Verdict

Check this out. Somewhere out there on the internet lives a species of PC hardware enthusiast that gets a kick out of endurance testing SSDs.

Among this strange breed, Intel SSDs have a very high reputation.

In fact, there have been reports of a 40GB Intel SSD soaking up 700TB of writes before finally losing the will to store data. When you consider that smaller drives fail faster in such conditions, well, it's pretty impressive.

So Intel's reputation when it comes to developing SSD firmwares that deliver excellent longevity is well earned.

Intel stresses that the same applies to the new 520 Series and its widely used, and strong-performing, SandForce SF-2281 controller. The firmware has been given the full Intel treatment.

That bodes very well for the long term.

What Intel hasn't done, however, is deliver a drive that immediately takes down the opposition in terms of raw performance. Most of our benchmark results are pretty much exactly what you would expect from a 120GB SandForce drive.

That said, there are a couple of areas where Intel's work might just be visible.

The Intel SSD 520 120GB is noticeably, if not dramatically, quicker than the Corsair Force GT 120GB in our random read and file decompression tests.

Unfortunately, sequential incompressible data write performance is no better than that same Corsair drive. Which means it's slower than both larger SandForce-based drives and the competition packing Marvell and Indilinx controllers.

We liked

The combination of Intel's attention to detail when it comes to SSD firware development and the sheer speed of the latest SandForce SF-2281 controller chip is pretty compelling. We also think 120GB is probably the current sweet spot in terms of balancing price with performance and capacity.

We disliked

Much cheaper than the 240GB model this 120GB drive may be, but it's still a significant investment to make. So it's a little disappointing that you not only have to give up half the capacity but also see write performance drop off, especially when shunting incompressible data around.

Verdict

SandForce performance plus Intel quality. Performance though is a little down on the 240GB version.

Review: Nokia Lumia 710

Martyn Brett — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 14:18:00 GMT

Overview, design and feel

The Nokia Lumia 710 is the second offering into the Windows Phone arena from Nokia, following the release of the Nokia Lumia 800 late last year.

The first thing you notice when comparing the Nokia Lumia 710 with its older mobile phone sibling is that the Nokia Lumia 710 looks and feels cheaper. And it is. Where the Nokia Lumia 800 SIM-free price is around £430, the Nokia Lumia 710 is expected to cost a somewhat more economical £300.

brightcove : 1442091230001

The reason the Nokia Lumia 710 feels like a cheaper handset is partly down to the weight, coming in at a sprightly 125.5g against the Nokia Lumia 800's 142g. On paper this seems like a good thing, but the smartphone is too light somehow, making it feel unsubstantial compared to its bigger brother.

In addition to this, the Nokia Lumia 710 screen is recessed slightly, and the transition from the front face of the phone to the sides feels quite angular. The result of this styling is that the phone design doesn't look or feel as coherent as the Nokia Lumia 800.

Also we found the separate physical buttons for Back, Home and Search on the Nokia Lumia 710 look and feel cheaper than the integral styling on the Nokia Lumia 800, and we caught the bottom left of the screen when going to press the Back button a number of times.

One major advantage over the Nokia Lumia 800 is that the rear cover is removable, since the Nokia Lumia 710 comes with a replaceable battery. Based on the battery life of the Nokia Lumia 800, the ability to carry a spare battery and swap out may well prove extremely useful.

With the Nokia Lumia 710, Nokia has returned to the days of the changeable covers - rear at least - to further personalise your mobile phone. Although we're all for changeable covers and phone personalisation, removing the cover feels like something we should be doing as little as possible when we saw the exposed pads onto which the side buttons press.

Although phones with changeable covers are more commonly marketed at younger users, the only available payment method for Vodafone and T-Mobile customers is by credit card, which many won't have. This seems odd since Microsoft enabled PayPal as a payment method on the Xbox 360 late last year, and those transitioning from Symbian handsets are used to having the option to pay via their phone bill.

It seems that at present, if you are interested in buying a Windows Phone, then you're best off with Orange, which is supporting pay via phone bill with Microsoft.

When we compared the size of the Nokia Lumia 710 (119 x 62.4 x 12.48mm) with the Nokia Lumia 800 (116.5 x 61.2 x 12.1mm), we were surprised to find it was the larger of the two. The only reason we could find for this was the extra mechanics required for a removable cover and replaceable battery in the Nokia Lumia 710.

The Nokia Lumia 710 and Nokia Lumia 800 share the same screen size (3.7 inches) and resolution (480 x 800p), although the Nokia Lumia 710 is limited to a ClearBlack TFT compared to the ClearBlack AMOLED on the Nokia Lumia 800.

They also both use Gorilla Glass, making them somewhat bomb-proof. The similarities continue to the processor, with both phones using the 1.4GHz single-core Qualcomm MSM8255T Scorpion/Snapdragon chip.

Outside of the Nokia stable of handsets, the Lumia 710 is similar to the HTC Radar, which is 11.5g heavier, at 137g, although similarly sized, measuring 120.5 x 61.5 x 10.9mm.

Both phones have a 5MP camera and 8GB of internal memory. But the HTC Radar has a slightly larger 3.8-inch screen and a substantially lower powered processor - a 1GHz single-core Qualcomm MSM8255 Scorpion/Snapdragon.

Interface

The Nokia Lumia 710's user interface follows the Windows Phone 7.5 Mango standard, which means there's no difference in the usability between the Nokia Lumia 710 and the Nokia Lumia 800.

There are some slight differences when compared with the HTC Radar, in that Nokia adds an additional tile colour option (Nokia Blue), 20 additional ringtones and three additional alarm sounds (Nokia calendar, Nokia email and Nokia message). This all means that your new Nokia Windows Phone can still sound like your old Nokia Symbian phone, if you want.

The Windows Phone interface is, at first glance, very different to other smartphone operating systems. As Symbian^3 devices have developed through Symbian Anna to Belle, the home screen has become more Android in appearance, with the menu structure using an app grid with the ability to have folders or sub-menus within menus.

Although there are some similarities to Android, iOS and Symbian in Windows Phone 7.5, the emphasis has changed from having many apps accessible on the home screen to having a few easily accessible apps on the start screen, in a scrollable 2x4 grid, with useful information displayed on their tiles.

This interface with four to eight live tiles on the screen at any time is more intuitive and faster to navigate.

The main negative of the Nokia Lumia 710's interface is the lack of folders, which will hopefully be partially rectified by the release of Windows Phone Tango.

An alphabetically listed app menu is searchable, jumping to first letter functionality when you have 45 or more apps (games don't count) installed. This dearly needs the sub-folder functionality too.

Contacts and calling

Setting up your contacts - or People, as Windows Phone calls them - is a breeze. When we powered on the Nokia Lumia 710 for the first time, we were asked to log in to or register for a Windows Live account, which, although non-compulsory, forms an integral part of how Windows Phone works.

This account was then synced to the People, Calendar and Email (Hotmail) apps and enabled IM via Windows Live Messenger, while becoming the default cloud backup solution for all contact information.

Next we were asked to log in or register for a Nokia account, which gives an idea of how Nokia plans to expand on its initially limited Windows Phone apps offering.

As well as the ability to sync people's contact information from Windows Live Hotmail, Facebook, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Nokia/OVI Mail and Yahoo, Nokia has created a Contacts Transfer app, which enables direct Bluetooth transfer of all contact information from one phone to another, in case you're not currently a social or cloud surfer.

As the People app populates from the different cloud and physical locations it automatically merges contacts where the name is the same across the sources, reducing the number of contact names to search through.

Even so, we found we needed to run through the contacts in the People app to do the last few contact merges manually where they had different names/nicknames in the different sources.

One major issue with the multiple sourced contact information is that it's somewhat an all or nothing functionality, displaying either all contacts from a source or none of them. Hopefully Nokia/Microsoft will provide a happy middle ground for customisation in a future update.

Once this is all complete, calling with the Nokia Lumia 710 is as easy as tapping the phone icon, which opens a call history screen with touchscreen buttons at the bottom for voicemail, a simple dial pad, access to your phone book and a call history search.

The People app defaults to the top-right live tile on new and reset Windows Phones, and can be found in the apps list if removed from the start screen.

The dial pad enables you to make a call and nothing much else, which feels a little limited when compared with the smart dialling provided on competing smartphones. However, contacts can be searched though separately in the People app, so the functionality is still accessible.

While making and receiving calls on the Nokia Lumia 710 with our Orange SIM, we found that the signal was maintained well, with the 3G signal switching quickly between Orange and T-Mobile.

Messaging

Messaging and social networking is where Windows Phone and the Nokia Lumia 710 really come into their own. Once we had set up accounts for Windows Live, Twitter and Facebook, we were able to choose which contacts to display in the People app.

Setting up Windows Live, Twitter and Facebook accounts meant that we could select contacts from the People app to IM or email via Windows Live Hotmail, write on their wall or chat with them on Facebook or send them a message on Twitter, along with the standard option to send them an SMS or MMS.

While on a contact's profile screen, we were able to swipe to the left to see what's new, which displays their recent posts on Facebook and Twitter. Swipe again to see their Facebook photo albums and swipe a third time to see a history of messages from them.

From the People app, a quick tap on a profile picture opened up the Me app, which can also be opened by selecting it from the app list - or start screen, if pinned. From here we were able to post a status update or check in on Windows Live, Twitter LinkedIn or Facebook.

Based on the ability to check in, seemed a pity that this feature wasn't linked to Foursquare as well, but we suppose we can't have everything, and this is a great start.

If we fancied a live chat, we could choose to 'Set chat status'. Although this didn't result in a visual change in the Me app, opening the Messaging app now showed an Online screen, which displayed contacts who were available on Windows Live Messenger and/or Facebook Chat.

From the Messaging app, we were able to select a contact and choose from messaging them via SMS or IM, creating a virtual conversation with them. All of these methods of communication made us feel well connected from the Nokia Lumia 710's general interface, without having to install third party apps.

However, Microsoft has released a Facebook app and Twitter and Foursquare have released their own, with Skype rumoured to be integrated into a future update to Windows Phone handsets.

Internet

Internet -via Wi-Fi or 3G - is fast and responsive on the Nokia Lumia 710, sharing the pre-installed Internet Explorer browser with the rest of the Windows Phone stable.

Connection times are substantially faster than Symbian devices, taking around four seconds to open the full (non-mobile) TechRadar site. These speeds are more akin to the top-end Android and iOS smartphones, as we found in our Nokia Lumia 800 review. Both Nokia phones share the same hardware and software that affect this performance.

As with the WiFi internet speed the Nokia Lumia 710 and Lumia 800 are on a par when using 3G for internet surfing taking around three seconds to initial load the Techradar website with text and fixed images and a further five seconds to load the rest.

This two part method means that you can be reading the articles whilst the animated areas of the site are still loading. With Internet Explorer directed to the mobile internet version of the site the load time was cut to nearly two seconds for all info.

Although Internet Explorer is pinned to the start screen out of the box, the space can be saved since most people, once used to Windows Phone, prefer to use the bottom left search button to open Bing and navigate from there.

This holds the same for the Local Scout app, since once Bing has been opened, four touchscreen buttons appear at the bottom of the screen, providing access to Local Scout, Music Scrobbler, Text/Barcode Scanner and Voice Recognition Internet Search.

Local Scout provides location-based information on shops, bars, restaurants and attractions.

The Music Scrobbler app listens to background music and searches for it in the Marketplace.

Text/Barcode Scanner scans barcodes, QR Codes, Microsoft Tags, books, CDs and DVDs, plus can translate scanned text - with mixed results, so we're undecided on this function despite it being a really cool feature.

Voice Recognition Internet Search starts a web search based on spoken words.

One major limitation that remains from the Nokia Lumia 800 is that Flash Player still hasn't arrived. According to the Flash Runtime Team at Adobe, although they are working with Microsoft to provide a Windows Phone Flash Player solution, "Windows Phone 7.5 Mango will not support Flash Player". Hopefully it will appear in Windows Phone 8 later this year.

Camera

As with the Nokia Lumia 800, the Nokia Lumia 710 doesn't feature a front-facing camera. The first Nokia Windows Phone expected to provide this functionality is the Nokia Lumia 900 or one of the Nokia Lumia 9xx variants.

This remains a frustration, especially following Microsoft's takeover of Skype. This is a feature that featured on Nokia Symbian phones as well as numerous Android handsets and iPhones.

The 5MP Nokia Lumia 710 camera is the first major cost saving compared with the 8MP Nokia Lumia 800 camera, although this is on par with the HTC Radar, just as the Nokia Lumia 800 is with the HTC Titan.

The camera software interface is the same across all of the Windows Phones, but the difference in resolution between hardware specs will see a difference in the file output.

This being said, although the Nokia Lumia 710 has a lower resolution camera than the Nokia Lumia 800, it does have a greater zoom capability, with a 4x digital zoom instead of a 3x one.

With Windows Phone 7.5 comes touchscreen-based tap to focus and shoot, which is very nice to have.

With this default Windows Phone functionality comes the beautiful integration between the Camera and Pictures apps. Take a photograph, tap on the arrow in the top-left corner of the camera screen and you enter the Pictures app in the Camera Roll, where you can auto-fix, face tag and upload the image to your selected quick share account (Facebook, Twitter or SkyDrive) or share it via email or any other social apps you may have installed.

See full res image

SHARED: Image quality is reduced along with file size when it's shared.

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MAXIMUM ZOOM: Images are noisy at full zoom settings.

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MINIMUM ZOOM: Zoomed out, images are much clearer.

See full res image

Although all images were taken in auto mode as this is where most owners will reside, the Nokia Lumia 710 provides a wide range of scene options with the standard Backlight, Macro, Landscape, Night, Portrait and Sports being bolster with Beach, Candlelight, Snow, and Sunset.

In addition to this we were able to change White Balance, Exposure, ISO, Metering Mode, Contrast, Saturation, Focus Mode, Resolution and Flickr Reduction. Sadly however, with all these options there is no option to use red-eye reduction flash.

After a lot of searching around, we found a number of third-party red-eye removal apps, but none have overly impressed, using very low-tech cover up methods.

Video

YouTube : http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0fr3CNkfG8

When it comes to video recording on the Nokia Lumia 710, we found the response to changes in light levels was good and there was minimal lag when panning around.

The major disappointment we had was that, as with the Nokia Lumia 800, the Nokia Lumia 710 doesn't permit changing the zoom level during recording, meaning that to zoom in or out we had to stop recording, change zoom level between the six preset levels and start recording a new section of video.

Although the Nokia Lumia 710 struggled in low light conditions without the single LED light, turning it on provided a reasonable colour depth and panning lag, as long as the subject was less than a couple of metres away.

Media

Pictures

One of the most important things when it comes to media is storage, and this is another area where money has been saved on the Nokia Lumia 710, providing 8GB of capacity compared with the Nokia Lumia 800's more generous 16GB. Yet again this mimics the HTC Radar specification, just as the Nokia Lumia 800 mimics the HTC Titan.

As long as this doesn't limit you too much, the Pictures app is a breeze to use, with a customisable in-app background based on the images on your phone.

We did, however, find that it's not possible to delete images in bulk from the Nokia Lumia 710 without using the Zune PC software. This isn't a limitation of the Nokia Lumia 710 specifically, but one of the Windows Phone 7.5 operating system.

Music

When it comes to listening to music on the Nokia Lumia 710, you're presented with two options out of the box, with the default Zune Player from Microsoft and the Nokia Music app.

The main advantages of Nokia Music over the Zune Music+Video app is that it includes Mix Radio, providing a selection of different genre-based Music Mixes to listen to over the air, or download to listen to later, which are updated weekly. Plus if you permit the app to use your location, it provides live local gig information.

That being said, the My Music section of Nokia Music is heavily reliant on the Zune Music+Video back end.

The only way to tell if you're using Nokia Music when scrolling through your music is that Nokia Music has 'My Music' rather than 'Music' written at the top of the screen, and provides selection via Genre, which isn't offered by Zune Music+Video.

Nokia Music, as its name implies, is limited to music media, whereas the Zune Music+Video app provides access to Music, Video, Podcasts stored on device, a standard FM Radio (with headphones) and direct access to the Music Marketplace.

If you're prepared to fork out £8.99 per month or £89.90 per year you can get your hands on a Zune Pass, which enables you to download and listen to as much music as you like from the Marketplace on your Phone, PC and Xbox 360. Although this is a nice idea, it seems a little expensive in the current market.

A frustration with the Zune service is that although there is a method of playing audiobooks on Microsoft Zune Media Players, this hasn't transitioned into the Windows Phone operating system. This means that a number of clever people have had to devise a work-around where you can upload audiobooks to the Zune software as local podcasts, enabling bookmarked audio, so you can pick up your audiobook where you put it down.

Doing a speaker comparison between the Nokia Lumia 710 and Nokia Lumia 800 - using Shelter by The XX - we found that although the sound from the Nokia Lumia 710 is fractionally more open, the Nokia Lumia 800 sounded slightly better.

We put the difference down to the construction of the phones, since through headphones they sounded the same. Nokia has already accepted that the sound quality could be improved in the Nokia Lumia 800 and promised an update later in the year. Hopefully this will be applied to the Nokia Lumia 710 too.

Games

Gaming is another area where the Nokia Lumia 710 excels, since it works as an extension of the Xbox 360 gaming experience. Many Xbox 360 Arcade games have been expanded to have variants playable on Windows Phone handsets.

Some over the counter games such as Kinectimals enable the user to take a snapshot of the television when playing the game on the games console, and transfer progress to the phone. They also use the Xbox 360 Kinect to take a photo of the Nokia Lumia 710 screen to transfer progress back to the console.

Not only are you able to download games to play, but you can also download an app to modify your Xbox 360 avatar if that takes your fancy. Or download an app to control your console, an app to act as a ruler, a spirit level, a torch and more.

The gaming experience on the Nokia Lumia 710 is very impressive, with the only disappointment being that games are somewhat more expensive than in other mobile app stores, including the Nokia Store.

Battery and connectivity

Battery

The battery life on the Nokia Lumia 710 suffers in the same way as the Nokia Lumia 800, providing a day's usage between changes. Long gone are the days of the endless battery life.

This isn't surprising, since the Nokia Lumia 710 has a measly - albeit removable - 1300mAh BP-3L battery, compared with the Nokia Lumia 800's (non-removable) 1450mAh BV-5JW.

Nokia states the Lumia 710 as being capable of up to 7.6 hours 3G talk time and up to 400 hours GSM or 3G standby time, compared with up to 9.5 hours 3G talk time and up to 265 hours GSM standby and 335 hours 3G standby on the Lumia 800.

When we now compare this with the specs for the HTC Radar, with its 1520mAh battery and up to 600/485 hours GSM/3G talk time and up to 480/535 hours GSM/3G standby, we note the improvements needed from Nokia.

The only advantage for the Nokia Lumia 710 is that, as the battery is removable, maybe someone like Mugen will develop a higher-capacity battery replacement.

Charging up the Nokia Lumia 710 is no different to the rest of the latest breed of phones out of the Nokia stable, using a micro USB connection on the top of the phone. One difference to the Nokia Lumia 800 is that there's no connector cover this time, with the micro USB socket exposed at all times.

As with other Windows Phone handsets, there is an option within phone settings to enable automatic switching to battery saver mode when the battery level drops below a preset figure. Once enabled, certain services such as automatic synchronisation of emails and app background tasks are switched off.

Connectivity

Connectivity on the Nokia Lumia 710 is no different to that on the Nokia Lumia 800, with a USB to micro USB cable included in the box for physical PC connectivity for synchronisation, data transfer and USB charging.

As with the Nokia Lumia 800, the Nokia Lumia 710 also supports Bluetooth 2.1 +EDR, and Wi-Fi 802.11b/g/n with the usual WEP, WPA, WPA2 (Enterprise & Personal) enabling both wireless accessory usage and Wi-Fi synchronisation with the Zune PC software, if you're prepared to take the battery hit.

The first time we connected the Nokia Lumia 710 to the PC driver, installation went smoothly and we were asked to install Zune software onto the PC, even though it was already installed. A bit of polish is needed by the software developer here, maybe.

Once the PC Zune software was opened with the phone connected, it checked for updates and found one, which it installed. Then the phone was ready for use.

The PC Zune software operates similarly to iTunes with iOS devices, requiring that you set up your music and videos in a folder structure and set the software to monitor it. There's an option for it to automatically re-structure and rename the files and folders based on changes to track details within the Zune software.

Once set up, transferring music, podcasts, videos and pictures on and off the Nokia Lumia 710 is as simple as you like, with the option to automatically sync all, by playlists or manually. To make things even easier, the Nokia Lumia 710 can be set to automatically synchronise with the Zune software via WiFi when non charge and in range of your home WiFi network.

As with the Nokia Lumia 800, the Nokia Lumia 710 isn't automatically recognised as a USB storage device, but this can be rectified by running a little third-party app that makes a small change to the registry on your PC to enable this.

In addition to the media transfer that uses the Zune software, contacts, email and calendar events can be synchronised with your PC's Outlook data via Windows Live and the Windows Live Outlook Connector add-on.

Finally, an additional advantage of the Windows Live service is that the Nokia Lumia 710 can access, modify, and save OneNote, Word, Excel and PowerPoint files on a 25GB provisioned space on SkyDrive, Microsoft's cloud service.

Maps and apps

Maps

Although Windows Phone 7.5 comes with Bing Maps fully integrated, the Nokia Lumia 710 comes with Nokia Maps, albeit a Marketplace link and Nokia Drive (full app), pre-installed.

This may cause confusion or seem a waste of time for some, but Nokia has a long history of excellent mobile maps and sat nav. The frustration in this case comes in the fact that the current offering from Nokia for Windows Phone feels disjointed at best.

The Nokia Maps app relies on Over-The-Air (OTA) map data when the Nokia Drive app downloads the map data onto the phone. This makes us wonder whether the two apps are being developed by completely separate teams in different parts of the world.

Tapping on an address in the People app or other areas of the operating system brings up the Bing Maps app, whereas to use Nokia Maps you have to open the app, which has text-based search and display places options, sourcing all information OTA even though Nokia Drive has map data stored on the smartphone.

Once you've selected a location, you have the choice to walk or drive. This is where things get even more disconnected, because choosing to drive doesn't open the Nokia Drive app, but provides less capable OTA navigation functionality with Nokia Maps.

To use the sat nav functionality provided in Nokia Drive, you need to open this app instead and use the text entry search to find your location, since Nokia Drive doesn't support map-based location selection or local places display.

Nokia Drive then provides sat nav using the on-device maps, although the search functionality is still performed OTA.

Nokia apps

Along with Nokia Maps and Nokia Drive, Nokia has a number of other apps for Windows Phone including Contacts Transfer, Apps Highlight and Nokia Music, which all come pre-installed on the Nokia Lumia 710.

In addition to these is TuneIn Radio and a useful Network Setup app to help automate setting up internet and MMS services when switching SIM cards.

An interesting Nokia app, which is a little harder to find, since it's still in public beta, is Nokia Pulse, which is a group-based social app with push notifications of updates.

Microsoft apps

Microsoft has also been busy developing apps and games to populate the Windows Phone Marketplace. The good news is that many of these are free and include, Facebook, YouTube, Last.fm and a number of utility apps like Weather and Unit Converter.

One little app that appeared a few weeks ago is the Suggestion Box which is for users to suggest, and vote on other peoples, improvements or changes to the current Windows Phone OS.

Pre-installed apps

Now we get to the pre-installed apps, of which there are 27 in all, many of which we have already covered, such as AppHighlights, Calendar, Camera, Contacts Transfer, Internet Explorer, Maps, Marketplace, Messaging, Music+Video (Zune), Nokia Maps, Drive and Music, Office, People, Phone and Pictures.

Of the remaining apps, Alarm, Calculator and Settings are quite self-explanatory.

This leaves eBay, ESPN, Groupon, Help+How-To, Sky News, Trip Advisor and We Care. The eBay app is nicely done, with the ability to perform guided searches as well as general searches, and the option to enable notifications to keep an eye on that must-have item you've bid on.

ESPN and Sky News are simple but nicely presented news apps, and Trip Advisor provides the ability to read and write reviews of hotels, restaurants, attractions and flights.

Groupon is a mobile extension of the Groupon website, providing localised discount vouchers for shops, restaurants and so on. Finally, Help+How-To is an online user guide for Windows Phone, and We Care is a little app from Nokia to let you know that the company cares about your privacy, which is nice.

All of these apps are easy to use, and can be uninstalled from the Nokia Lumia 710 if needed, by long-pressing on the app name in the app list and selecting Uninstall.

We accept that the Windows Phone Marketplace isn't as big as the App Store or Android Market, but there are some excellent gems in there, and more are appearing every day.

Hands-on gallery

Official gallery

Verdict

The Nokia Lumia 710 is by no means an ugly phone, but when compared with the beautiful curves of the Nokia Lumia 800 it starts to feel cheaper than maybe it should. The smartphone is directly aimed at younger users with its changeable rear cover, but we're not sure its hardware needed to be downgraded as much as it has been.

We liked

The removable battery is what we have always loved about Nokia handsets, enabling us to carry a spare just in case.

The user interface continues to impress in many ways with its speed of response and the intuitiveness of its icon.

Nokia apps such as Nokia Maps, Nokia Drive, Nokia Music (with Mix radio and gig info) and Nokia Pulse are great. We can only hope that the Nokia Drive and Maps integration will be sorted out.

The integration with Xbox Live is a dream for those of us that have grown up with console and handheld gaming.

The use of cloud based services to back up information and the ability to merge contact information from more than one cloud based service making communication and sharing with friends across the world so much faster and easier.

We disliked

The small capacity of the battery leads us to be disappointed again with the juice-retention of Nokia's Windows Phone offerings.

The cheaper look and feel of the Nokia Lumia 710 when compared with the Nokia Lumia 800 is disappointing, as is the downgrading of the screen (TFT instead of AMOLED), camera (5MP instead of 8MP) and internal storage (8GB instead of 16GB).

The repeated lack of a front-facing camera, with Skype around the corner and the Tango Video app already existing, is frustrating.

The visually fragile volume and camera buttons that are exposed when the rear cover is removed look like they are going to get damaged by battery switchers or cover changers, and that it's just a question of how long it will take.

Final verdict

Although we would buy the Nokia Lumia 710 over the HTC Radar, it's overshadowed by the Nokia Lumia 800, which impressed us a lot more and makes the Nokia Lumia 710 feel more like its cheaper relative than we would have liked. We know that the phone costs less, but the cost savings feel too apparent.

For the small drop in price and the expectation that both phones are to drop in price, we're left feeling that, unless you really want the changeable cover and removable battery, you're better off saving up a little more money and buying the Nokia Lumia 800 instead. The older phone gives a lot more bang for your buck.

Based on the recent announcements from Nokia and rumours flying around the internet, it's likely this will remain the budget option for the foreseeable future - a little bit more of a price drop and we'll be a lot more impressed with this otherwise decent handset.

Review: Plextor M3 256GB SSD

Simon Crisp — Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:30:00 GMT

We looked at one of Plextor's first 6Gb/s rated drives - the PX-128M2S - last year. And barely nine months later, the next generation is upon us, in the shape of the M3 series. According to Plextor's own blurb, these are its most advanced drives yet.

The Plextor M3S SSD comes in 128GB (510MB/s read, 210MB/s write) and 256GB (510MB/s read, 360MB/s write) flavours, both of which are available now. The flagship M3S 512GB model (525MB/s read, 445MB/s write) will be appearing soon.

The new drives come with an up-rated Marvell controller, four times as much cache as the previous generation (in the 256GB and 512GB models), and faster NAND to complete the upgrade. So what do they look like when you throw some data down their tubes?

Marvell-ous

The new M3 series uses the same Marvell 88SS9174-BKK2 controller as the M2S series – and a load of other drives come to that – but with a twist: Plextor has made a raft of upgrades to the firmware. This, combined with 24nm Toshiba Toggle MLC NAND and a large 512MB cache (256MB in the 128GB model), gives the Plextor M3S 256GB pretty impressive performance.

Eight 32GB 24nm Toshiba Toggle NAND chips give the drive its capacity. These sit on the topside of the PCB, along with the two 256MB Nanya DDR3 1333 chips that make up the cache. The controller is positioned all on its lonesome on the underside of the board.

TechRadar Labs

Sequential read/write (incompressible)
AS SSD: MB/S: Bigger is better

Plextor PX-256M3S
Read: 468
Write: 346
Vertex 3 MAX IOPS
Read: 506
Write: 234
Samsung SSD 830
Read: 499
Write: 391

4K random read/write performance
AS SSD: MB/S: Bigger is better

Plextor PX-256M3S
Read: 24
Write: 46
Vertex 3 MAX IOPS
Read: 18
Write: 42
Samsung SSD 830
Read: 20
Write: 53

Under test conditions using the ATTO benchmark, the drive came pretty close to Plextor's own figures for sequential reads at 507MB/s, and did marginally better than the quoted figures for sequential writes at 365MB/s.

The more demanding AS SSD incompressible data benchmark saw it fall behind both the Vertex 3 Max IOPS and Samsung SSD 830 in the sequential read/write test, but it did much better in the 4K random read/write tests.

A bit of real world testing saw the drive take just four and half minutes to copy a 50GB folder of mixed file sizes and types, while loading Office 10 Pro took a smidgen under five minutes from key code entry to being ready for use.

Plextor is also shipping the M3S with its proprietary True Speed technology. This supposedly provides better sustained drive performance over time and, together with advanced wear levelling and bad block management, keeps the drive running closer to fresh-out-the-box than many of its competitors'.

The M3 series carries on from the previous generation, offering strong performance compared to the Samsung SSD 830 and OCZ's Vertex 3 Max IOPS. It's competitively priced as well, and at around £300 it may well ruffle a few feathers.

Plextor backed its previous range of SSDs with the usual three-year warranty, but the M3S series is backed for an unusually generous five years.

Verdict

Plextor's new drive is a rather impressive offering. It may not be the fastest kid on the block, but it's powerful enough and that price tag makes it a pretty attractive choice too.

Review: Philips Brilliance 241P4QPYES

Jeremy Laird — Sun, 05 Feb 2012 09:30:00 GMT

Not so long ago, affordable monitors were a case of anything you fancied so long as it was TN. More recently, screens with IPS and VA panels have been coming thick and fast. Hallelujah! The latest member of this new monitor army is the Philips Brilliance 241P4QPYES.

It sports what Philips calls an AMVA panel. Think of it as the latest iteration of the MVA breed, which in turn is a particular flavour of VA (vertical alignment) LCD panel. That typically means much better colours, contrast and viewing angles.

The only slight snag is that the competition among the £200-ish, better-than-TN brigade is hotting up. Dell has been flogging eIPS screens for a while, while BENQ prefers to go with VA tech.

Meanwhile, ViewSonic has just launched an IPS-based screen, the VP2365-LED. And it's very, very good indeed.

MVA – brilliant

Specs-wise, the Philips Brilliance 241P4QPYES certainly looks promising. That AMVA panel is claimed to be good for 178-degree viewing angles in both planes, 6ms response times and static contrast of 5,000:1.

Factor in the LED backlight and good connectivity, which includes HDMI, DVI and VGA, and you have a very promising package. You even get a fully adjustable stand that lets you rotate the monitor to portrait mode.

More predictable is the combination of a 24-inch diagonal and 1920 x 1080 pixel grid. For PC use we'd prefer the slightly taller 1920 x 1200p alternative, but that's asking a lot at this price point.

Philips has also thrown a few image enhancement options into the mix. We're not big fans of dynamic contrast, but it's offered here and since it's switchable, everyone wins.

The same goes for pixel overdrive, a technology used to improved response times. It's known as Smart-response in Philips' parlance, and again it's fully switchable. As it happens, we found it delivered noticeably better response when enabled, without introducing any inverse ghosting or input.

As for the other image quality metrics, most are pretty impressive. Colours are rich without being over-saturated. Black and white scales both reveal excellent detail, and there's little evidence of colour compression. Gradients are rendered impeccably and there's plenty of depth to the contrast.

Less impressive are the viewing angles which can't quite match the best IPS screens. The overall brightness isn't exactly stellar either, leading to slightly dirty looking whites.

We liked

It's a joy to find yet another great non-TN screen available at this relatively affordable price point. The main benefits are excellent colours and contrast. Philips has managed better pixel response than we're used to seeing from an MVA screen. Impressive

We disliked

While the Philips Brilliance 241P4QPYES's chassis is very adjustable and well featured, it looks cheap, and the four ports of the USB hub are inconveniently located on the rear rather than near the bezel. And as good as the image quality is, things are moving fast right now.

Verdict

A year ago, this MVA panel would have been a world beater. Today, the Philips Brilliance 241P4QPYES is merely very good. There are slightly better screens available for similar money.

Review: Compaq Presario CQ57-366SA

Jeff Parsons — Sat, 04 Feb 2012 09:30:00 GMT

The Compaq Presario CQ57-366SA won't win any awards for its looks, but does offer the things we look for in a budget machine. It's solid with a decent screen and great speakers, and the sort of internal specifications we'd expect at this price.

However, even though this is a budget machine, we'd still appreciate something a little nicer to look at.

The Compaq is a solid black brick seemingly devoid of colours, shades or textures. It's boring and uninspired but, as mentioned above, solidly built – with only a small amount of flex detectable around the chassis.

We were also pleased to discover that it's not as heavy as it looks, but it isn't the lightest at 2.5kg.

Leaving the aesthetics behind, usability is perfectly acceptable. The keyboard has wide buttons and a good depth of travel but, despite the amount of space on the chassis, feels cramped. There's no numeric keypad or quick-access hotkeys to be found, but, like most laptops, you can alter volume and media playback by holding down the Function key and using the F-keys.

While the touchpad is responsive, it's also the exact same shade of black as the rest of the chassis and therefore wonderfully camouflaged.

Where the Compaq picks up again is with the screen. It's got a 1366 x 768 pixel resolution, meaning you can enjoy 720p HD videos – although the full 1080p experience is out of reach. We found that although the screen was very bright, it wasn't as sharp as we've seen elsewhere. The Super-TFT coating helps, but ultimately we'd pick this for working on documents rather than watching Avatar.

Having said that, the Altec Lansing speakers are very good indeed – so we'd definitely be listening to music while we worked.

£350 won't buy you the greatest components on the market, but the basic user will find everything they require here. The first-generation Intel Core i3 processor is backed up by a capable 4GB of RAM and a standard integrated graphics chip that will handle video streaming from iPlayer or YouTube but stops short of advanced editing suites.

TechRadar Labs

Battery Eater '05: 184 minutes
Cinebench: 7839
3DMark 2006: 1464

There's a DVD rewriter and a standard 320GB hard drive for storing programs and media.

Better battery

Pleasantly surprising was the 184-minute battery life the Presario posted on our benchmarking tests. It's good to see budget laptops lasting more than three hours and, with careful usage, we reckon you could squeeze even more out.

The only noticeable omission in terms of connectivity is the lack of an HDMI port for connecting to a high-definition external monitor or TV. You'll have to make do with the standard VGA Out connection or buy an adapter for one of the three USB ports.

There's an SD Card expansion slot and an Ethernet port in case you don't want to use the 802.11n Wi-Fi connection to access the internet.

The Compaq Presario CQ57- 366SA is a perfectly acceptable budget laptop, with special mention going to the battery life and speaker system. It doesn't look, or perform, like a standout laptop and there are alternatives – such as the Acer Aspire 5742 – but if you're searching for a basic machine for the next year or two this is a good pick.

Review: Toshiba Qosmio F750

Jeff Parsons — Fri, 03 Feb 2012 09:30:00 GMT

Toshiba's all-conquering Qosmio range was the first to bring us glasses-free 3D, and we were so impressed with the X770 that we awarded it 4.5 stars. The Qosmio F750 continues the tradition, albeit with a couple of drawbacks.

The sub-standard keyboard and paltry battery life might put some off, but anyone looking for a movie powerhouse won't fail to be impressed.

The bright red outer design is eye-catching and complemented by the glossy all-black look under the lid. White LEDs around the touchpad, power button and hotkeys also add a bit of visual flair.

Unsurprisingly though, it's neither light nor svelte. Measuring in at 386 x 265 x 39mm with a weight of 3.2kg the Qosmio is more of a desk-based PC replacement than a portable gaming machine.

Once you fire up the laptop though, the lack of portability gets lost in a storm of power provided by the Intel Core i7-2630QM CPU and Nvidia GeForce GT540M dedicated graphics chip.

Interacting with the Qosmio is made all the better by the fantastic screen Toshiba has incorporated. Capable of full 1080p high-definition visuals, the screen is bright, crisp and coated with the reflective Super-TFT coating that adds a degree of richness to the colours in pictures and movies.

The standout feature is, of course, the glasses-free 3D effect. By using the webcam to track your eyes, you can move your heads freely while retaining the 3D image unlike, for example, Nintendo's 3DS game system which requires you to keep your head in one position for the 3D effect.

While 3D will appeal to some, others might not be converted yet – and to be fair, the effect isn't as impressive when compared with the standard Active Shutter 3D system. But considering the price of the glasses, and the prospect of losing them, we're more than happy with this alternative.

TechRadar Labs

Battery Eater '05: 76 minutes
Cinebench: 16875
3DMark 2006: 8173

Average usability

While the screen and sheer power is fantastic, some of the usability suffers. The keyboard is a standard, flat affair and although the keys are nicely sized, there's some definite flex around the centre and we doubt it could cut it as a serious gaming keyboard.

Things are better when it comes to the touchpad; it's responsive and has a non-glossy surface that is comfortable to use. The only drawback is it's a little on the small side. For serious gaming, you're going to want to invest in a USB mouse.

Where the Qosmio really falls down is on battery life. Given the specifications we didn't expect much in terms of longevity but the Qosmio F750 gave out after only 74 minutes. It's a problem, but not a deal-breaker. The F750 isn't trying to be an ultraportable and to buy it thinking so is a mistake. In fact, its big brother the Qosmio X770-107 couldn't even manage an hour and gave out after 44 minutes.

We can't help but like the Qosmio a lot and its decisive pros and cons list should make it an easy decision. If you want hardcore visuals and processing power, we'd recommend it – although we'd advise you to also invest in a decent USB mouse and keyboard.

If you're less fussed about power over battery, and don't like 3D, then save your £1,300 for a different machine.

Review: HP Pavilion dv7-6b51ea

What Laptop — Thu, 02 Feb 2012 09:30:00 GMT

It's not often that a laptop will get everything right when it comes to media playing. It might have a fantastic screen, for example, but the speakers could be inadequate, especially if you want to get the most out of Blu-ray's DTS HD and Dolby HD goodness.

The HP Pavilion dv7-6b51ea is different, however, and ticks all the boxes that are required of making a fantastic media playing laptop. But before you get to appreciate its media playing chops you need to go through a tedious setup procedure when you first turn it on.

Setting up Windows 7 Home Premium with a username, time zone and connecting it to a wireless network – plus setting when to automatically update Windows – is a necessary step, but after all that it was frustrating – to put it mildly – to be faced with another set of installation steps – this time for HP's own Total Care service. All it does is end up delaying you from what you really want to do – which is to get started with your brand new laptop.

Another thing that annoyed us was that if you don't want updates from HP Support Assistant, or for your laptop to be tuned up automatically, you can't just select 'No' but have to choose 'No, remind me later'. Even if you're not interested in the service, you're going to be nagged about it in the future. In the grand scheme of things this is a small irritant: once you've finished the setup process you won't have to worry about it again, apart from the odd reminder.

Media mogul

Finally, we can enthuse about the dv7-6b51ea's media prowess. For a start the 17.3 inch LED screen looks amazing, with a not inconsiderable 1600 x 900 maximum resolution. As you'd expect from an LED screen, colours and contrasts are brilliantly reproduced and high definition media looks great – just as well considering the HP Pavilion dv7-6b51ea features a Blu-ray drive.

All good so far, but what about the Achilles' heel of so many laptops – the speakers? Once again the dv7-6b51ea triumphs thanks to HP's partnership with Beats Audio, resulting in some excellent compact speakers that sound amazing. Little details in our test Blu-ray's soundtrack were picked up and reproduced perfectly. There is even a built-in subwoofer on the base of the laptop that gives low frequency sounds a real depth and impact.

Another nice feature when it comes to media is the 1TB hard drive which offers loads of space for holding photos and MP3s and high definition movies – saving you from having to carry around CDs, DVDs and Blu-rays and having to use the optical disc drive, which can save precious minutes on the battery life.

While the AMD Radeon HD 6490 graphics card is no slouch, it's not quite powerful enough for the latest games, but for the odd less-demanding game it'll cope pretty well. Also the 8GB of RAM supplied is huge and means almost all tasks will open and run smoothly, whilst multitasking won't be a problem at all.

Whilst running a Blu-ray movie we had Skype running and Internet Explorer open on a number of websites, and the HP Pavilion dv7-6b51ea didn't miss a beat.

So where else does the HP Pavilion dv7-6b51ea excel? Well, at the risk of appearing shallow it is a stunner in the looks department. From the brushed aluminium outer shell, to the soft, understated light that glows around the mouse pad, this is a laptop that you would be keen to whip out and show off.

At 3.45kg it's not very portable, and it's nowhere near as thin or light as the latest Ultrabooks.

TechRadar Labs

Battery Eater '05: 195 minutes
Cinebench: 5259
3DMark 2006: 5715

Just the type

The keyboard is large enough to type on comfortably and the aforementioned gorgeously-lit mouse pad is large, responsive and supports multi-touch gestures. There is a fingerprint reader for extra security to boot.

Next to the power button is the 'web' button. When we first saw this we excitedly thought it could be for booting into a light Linux operating system designed solely for browsing the web – as found on a lot of Sony VAIO laptops. However, all it does is open up the default web browser when in Windows 7. It's a feature that manages to be handy and a little bit useless all at once.

Also, at first glance it appeared that the HP Pavilion dv7-6b51ea didn't have any USB 3.0 ports, with the familiar blue colour code missing from all of the USB ports. This couldn't be right, not in 2012 with a laptop just shy of £1000. We checked the specs, and indeed there are USB 3.0 ports.

On closer inspection the two USB 3.0 ports were on the left of the laptop's case. Not highlighted by blue, but with a subtle 'SS' next to the USB icons. Again not a big problem, but it makes it a little harder to find the USB 3.0 ports in a hurry.

Also as a laptop positioning itself as an ultimate entertainment laptop, there is no 3D support. If you're not too into 3D then this won't be a problem, and the lack of 3D helps keep the price south of £1000, but if you want a laptop that can handle the latest media, while future-proofed, then the absence 3D out of the box could be a blow.

However, the AMD Radeon HD 6490 graphics card does support AMD HD3D, so if you plugged it into a 3D monitor or TV you might be able to get 3D working.

A battery life of just over three hours is good for such a power-hungry machine, but not astounding.

Overall, the HP Pavilion dv7-6b51ea is a fantastic laptop for media and entertainment, if a little on the expensive side.

Review: Toshiba 32RL858B

Tech staff — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 15:00:00 GMT

Overview and features

The more time goes by, the cannier Toshiba seems to get at understanding the needs of specific sections of the UK TV market. The Toshiba 46TL868 tested recently did a great job of catering for people wanting a good-sized active 3D screen on the cheap.

And now there's the Toshiba 32RL858, a 32-inch TV that manages to combine a strikingly affordable price point with just the sort of features and looks a savvy budget 32-inch TV buyer would be crying out for.

It's remarkably slim for a budget television, for a start, with both a tiny bezel and a trim rear that will help it fit into a potentially much snugger space than your average 32-inch TV. It's also got a built-in Freeview HD tuner, and uses Edge LED lighting rather than an old-school CCFL system.

It also rather excellently fits into modern lifestyles by supporting playback of multimedia files from either a networked (ideally Windows 7) PC or a USB storage device.

As if this wasn't already more than enough for a 32-inch TV costing under £400, the Toshiba 32RL858 even carries the brand's new online platform, Toshiba Places, which provides access to various video, music and information services.

In fact, so strong is the Toshiba 32RL858's feature list for its £399 UK price, it can't help but make you wonder if Toshiba has had to compromise on the TV's performance somewhere along the way.

Features

Most cheap and cheerful 32-inch TVs are cut from more or less the same aesthetic cloth. They're almost universally fairly chunky bits of kit with wide bezels that are usually finished in some glossy but plasticky black colour. Toshiba appears to have recognised this lack of variety, and so has come up with something completely different with the 32RL858.

For starters, it's a muted silver colour rather than black. Second, its bezel is exceptionally slim - not much wider, in fact, than the once-groundbreaking width of the bezels on the high-end Samsung 7000 Series TVs. Third, its rear is the absolute opposite of chunky, measuring only around 30mm deep.

In short, the Toshiba 32RL858 is a perfect option for fitting either 'invisibly' into a main living room, or slipping into a potentially space-limited second room.

Despite its slimness, though, the Toshiba 32RL858 has managed to cram a more than adequate number of connections onto its rear. These include three HDMIs, a USB port -through which you can play a solid mix of video (including DivX HD), photo and music file formats, a D-Sub PC port so the TV can double as a computer monitor and an Ethernet port - through which you can stream files from a networked PC or go online with Toshiba's Places system.

If wiring your TV up to your router sounds like hassle, you can add Wi-Fi via a USB dongle. This dongle is an optional extra rather than being included free, but this is fair enough with such a cheap TV.

The only bum note with the Toshiba 32RL858's connections is that most of them face straight out of the screen's rear, rather than permitting side access. This could clearly create a few problems for anyone wanting to wall-hang the set, and thus flies in the face of the ultra-slim bodywork.

Casting an eagle eye down the Toshiba 32RL858's specification list, it's gratifying to discover that its screen is a Full HD one, despite its price, and that it has a Freeview HD tuner when it wouldn't have been surprising to find only a standard definition one.

The TV set's slenderness is only possible, of course, because the screen is driven by Edge LED lighting. And, as usual, this has helped the Toshiba 32RL858 to deliver a startlingly high claimed contrast ratio - 3,000,000:1, to be precise. Or to be imprecise, given how large a pinch of salt such manufacturer figures need to be taken with.

As if the use of Edge LED lighting wasn't surprising enough on a big-brand budget TV, Toshiba has also managed to include 100Hz processing on the set, which should hopefully mean it suffers less with motion blur than your average budget telly.

And still this isn't the end of the surprises. For tucked away in the TV's on-screen menus is a suite of unexpectedly advanced picture adjustments. These include an adequate colour management system, complete with fine-tuning for the brightness and saturation of the six key colour components.

Wrapping up the Toshiba 32RL858's remarkably long list of features is its Places online system. This remains one of the most attractively presented of all the smart TV interfaces, and is also to be admired for the unusual effort it puts into personalising the smart TV experience.

You can set up different front ends for different users, with individual favourites lists and such like. It's no surprise to find that other brands are starting to deliver similar personalisation traits with their upcoming 2012 smart TVs.

It's good to find, too, that Toshiba has recently added the Acetrax film streaming platform and Facebook to Toshiba Places - especially because prior to that, the platform's 'Social' Place was more or less empty.

However, despite these new additions, the Places service remains rather behind the online services of its major rivals in raw content terms.

Yes, there's BBC iPlayer and YouTube, plus a bunch of subscription-only services. But overall there isn't nearly as much going on in terms of free video streams or gaming/utility apps as there probably ought to be. Hopefully Toshiba will cram lots more content onto Places in the coming months.

For the sake of completeness, it should probably be stressed here that the Toshiba 32RL858 doesn't carry any 3D support. But as well as 3D being of questionable value on a 32-inch TV unless it's going to be used predominantly as a gaming monitor, it's not really realistic to expect to find 3D on a budget TV.

Even the occasional budget TV that has carried 3D has tended to make a mess of it.

Picture quality

And so to the moment of truth. Has the Toshiba 32RL858's almost slavish bid to be all things to all men with its features led to some nasty picture compromises?

Actually, no. While its pictures are never going to challenge those of the leading lights in the TV world, they are certainly far better than those of the vast majority of budget 32-inch TVs.

So this review can finish on a deserved high note, let's get the bad news out of the way first. This is largely centred around the appearance of some backlight consistency problems. While watching very dark material on the Toshiba 32RL858, there are some parts of the picture that look unnaturally brighter than others, thanks to the difficulties associated with spreading Edge LED lighting evenly across the entire screen.

However - and this is a pretty big however - the backlight problems are generally very subtle, particularly if you do the sensible thing and rein in the Toshiba 32RL858's backlight level to somewhere around 60%. Certainly at this point the issues are far less overt than they are on some of Toshiba's larger and more expensive TVs.

Obviously having to calm the backlight down to fight the lighting consistency problems means you have to accept something of a hit with the image's overall brightness. But the Toshiba 32RL858's innate brightness is actually so high that pictures still have plenty of punch and dynamism even after backlight taming is complete.

Getting back to the negatives, the Toshiba 32RL858 is a merely adequate standard definition performer, since its processing doesn't prove quite as astute at suppressing source noise as the best TVs around.

That said, standard definition images do at least look reasonably sharp, and colours hold up passably well - something that certainly can't be said of the standard definition performance of many other cheap TVs.

It probably hasn't escaped your notice so far that even the negatives raised with the Toshiba 32RL858 have tended to come with some sort of positive qualification. There really isn't anything irredeemably wrong with the TV's pictures at all. And there are lots of things right.

Colours, for instance, are much more natural, vibrant but also subtle than those of almost any other sub-£400 32-inch TV around. With HD, in particular, the Toshiba 32RL858's colours look like they belong to a mid-range rather than a budget TV - there's none of that 'PC' (rather than video) flavour so common with cheap sets.

Part of the reason colours look so good is that the set is also miles better than most budget TVs where black level response is concerned. Dark corners are only very marginally affected by the sort of grey mist effect so common at the cheap end of the TV market. And as noted earlier, there are also no serious problems with backlight inconsistency - so long as you don't try to run the backlight at its highest levels.

Dark scenes lack a little shadow detailing and colour punch compared with more expensive TVs, but again, for the money there's really nothing to complain about.

The Toshiba 32RL858's sharpness is very good for its price, too, mostly because the 100Hz engine and a seemingly fast-response core panel means that there's much less motion blur and resolution loss than you get with the vast majority of budget LCD TVs.

Gaming

There's also the Toshiba 32RL858's input lag to consider. After all, as a 32-inch TV there's a good chance it will be used at some point as a gaming monitor. So it was pleasing to measure a satisfactory average lag figure of around 35ms - low enough not to significantly damage your gaming performance.

Ease of use, sound and value

Ease of use

This is a fairly strong area for the Toshiba 32RL858. As hinted at in the Features section, for instance, the on-screen menus for its Places online service are really attractive - colourful, friendly and much less intimidating than those of most if not all other smart TV interfaces.

They should also provide a simple way of organising potentially lots of services - should lots of services ever materialise! And the attempt to personalise Toshiba Places for different users in your home is welcome, if not fully realised yet.

The normal TV menus initially disappoint by not following the graphics-rich, intuitive 'two-wheel' system found on higher-level Toshiba TVs. But while the Toshiba 32RL858's more straightforward text- rather than graphics-oriented menus might not be as attractive, they're reasonably logically organised and do a decent job of enabling different users to select the level of picture fine tuning that best suits their technical confidence.

Turning to the Toshiba 32RL858's remote control, it again is a cut above the budget TV norm, thanks to feeling less flimsily built, being better organised and responding more satisfactorily to button presses. It also doesn't have that rather odd and irksome sliding silver shield that lets down the remotes for Toshiba's high-end TVs.

Sound quality

Not surprisingly, given how slim it is, the Toshiba 32RL858 struggles to impress with its sound. The tiny speakers shoehorned into its svelte frame fail to deliver any sense of soundstage expansion when asked to try to portray an action scene, leaving such scenes sounding flat and overcrowded.

Bass is in severely short supply too. Before you get too despondent, though, it should be said that the set does cope adequately with the sort of undemanding, run-of-the-mill audio fodder that dominates the majority of a typical household's day-to-day viewing.

The Toshiba 32RL858's audio is only average, there's no getting round that. But it isn't as brittle and feeble-sounding as some budget TVs we've heard.

Value

The Toshiba 32RL858 is pretty much off the scale in this department. Toshiba's TV offers far more in both feature and performance terms than pretty much anything else around in the sub-£400 segment of the 32-inch television marketplace.

Verdict

The Toshiba 32RL858 is one of those TVs where you find yourself forever double checking that its price is really as low as you thought it was. After all, it offers online smart TV functionality, a Freeview HD tuner, a Full HD resolution, DLNA and USB file playback, Edge LED lighting and even 100HZ processing, despite costing under £400.

It's also remarkably attractive for what's ostensibly a budget TV, thanks to its extremely narrow bezel, unusual silver finish and slim rear end.

It even provides a surprising amount of adjustment options for getting pictures looking exactly how you want them to.

In short, the Toshiba 32RL858 feels like a mid-range TV at a budget price.

We liked

The amount of features the Toshiba 32RL858 carries for its money is outstanding. The Freeview HD tuner and network/multimedia features are particularly welcome, given the set's second-room potential.

The TV's extremely slender design is a great find at the sub-£400 price level too, as is the set's all-round impressive picture quality.

We disliked

Dark scenes lack a little shadow detail versus some more expensive sets. There's some very minor evidence of backlight inconsistency, too. The set's audio is average to the extent that it struggles to convince during action films, and finally there's not as much content on Toshiba Places as there is on rival online platforms.

But then having any online functionality at all on the Toshiba 32RL858 is arguably a bonus. In fact, all of the TV's negatives are small within the context of its lowly price.

Final verdict

Toshiba has been quietly but surely making the budget end of the TV world its own in recent years, and the 32RL858 is a perfect example of just how much Toshiba has learned, and why the brand is now hard to beat for anyone on the hunt for a good TV for not much cash.

The TV looks much better than most budget models, with its unusual silver look, exceptionally narrow bezel and ultra-slim rear. It's also got way more features than most budget TVs - most notably a Freeview HD tuner, Full HD resolution, 100Hz motion processing, smart TV functionality and network multimedia playback capability.

Best of all, though, is its picture quality, which neatly sidesteps nearly all the usual problems associated with budget TVs.

Review: Toshiba 40RL858B

Jamie Carter — Wed, 01 Feb 2012 12:13:00 GMT

Overview and features

Being first out of the blocks is important in the world of consumer tech, but the most successful gadgets tend to be carefully thought out responses to what's already on the market - and that's exactly what this 40-inch Edge LED backlit LCD TV tries to do.

Announced at Berlin's IFA exhibition last autumn, but launched in the UK this month, the Toshiba 40RL858 addresses a perceived demand for smart TVs by putting a revamped version of Toshiba Places at the forefront of an increasingly standard feature set that marries a Freeview HD tuner with Edge LED backlighting and 100Hz scanning.

However, there's no suggestion of 3D goodies, despite Toshiba having issued televisions in 2011 with both active shutter and passive 3D systems.

Not atypically for a flatscreen TV, the Toshiba 40RL858 is also all about outward appearances, adding to the current penchant for metallic-clad designs, and with an impressively slim depth of just 38mm.

What's more, the bezel around the panel measures a tiny 80mm, which is far more impressive than the slightly plasticky-looking metallic 'styled' chassis.

The Toshiba 40RL858 comes in only one other size, the 32-inch 32RL858. But the RL Series isn't the only clutch of Toshiba TVs arriving early in 2012.

Also available is the TL868 Series, a slightly higher end choice including the Toshiba 40TL868 and Toshiba 46TL868. This series adds active shutter 3D (perhaps as a response to some underwhelming reviews of passive 3D TVs?), 200Hz scanning and an extra HDMI port, as well as sporting a gloss black finish.

Features

Although the Toshiba 40RL858 is all wired up for some online action, it lacks integrated Wi-Fi. That's a real shame, and its absence is likely to make Toshiba Places an underused resource, although the brand does sell a WLM-20U2 Wireless Dongle for an additional £30 or so.

Toshiba Places is slowly becoming a genuinely useful online hub. It's had the likes of BBC iPlayer, YouTube and Flickr for some time, and now adds Facebook and Acetrax to the mix.

Also strung across an unusual scrolling timeline-style user interface are the likes of Aupeo (web radio), Viewster, Dailymotion and Woomi (random video content), alongside three rather lacklustre (though child-friendly) subscription apps, Box Office 365, Cartoon Network and HiT Entertainment.

This odd mix of services doesn't really deliver the choice and openness that the best smart TV platforms do, although we suppose the presence of BBC iPlayer on its own will be enough to convince a lot of people to invest in Toshiba Places.

Connections

A Freeview HD tuner and CAM slot (for adding subscription channel packages) mean one less HDMI input on the Toshiba 40RL858 than is becoming normal - there are only two on the reverse of the TV, with a third on a side panel.

Also back there is a set of component video inputs, and slots for composite video, RGB Scart, a D-Sub 15-pin port for directly attaching a PC or laptop, and Ethernet LAN for getting online via wires.

Audio is sent in via some phono inputs (if you're using those component video slots) and out through a digital optical audio output.

Sadly there's just a single USB 2.0 slot on the Toshiba 40RL858, and although it's able to play a plethora of video, music and photo files from a thumbdrive, we're confused as to why it's alone - where's the Wi-Fi dongle supposed to go?

With an Edge LED-backlit panel with 100Hz scanning, the Toshiba 40RL858's core hardware is relatively advanced for the money.

The panel itself boasts a Full HD 1920 x 1080 pixel panel, support for 24 frames per second (fps) fare from Blu-ray discs, while a sensor can be activated to automatically dim or brighten those LEDs, as ambient light conditions prescribe in a feature called AutoView.

Tweakers can perform a detailed calibration on the Toshiba 40RL858, with everything from base colour adjustments and colour temperature changes across the spectrum all possible.

For more casual users, there's a roster of preset picture modes that include a game mode and useful Hollywood 1 and Hollywood 2 settings (the former is the cleaner, darker and most natural). We didn't find the ColourMaster feature of much use, although the usual digital noise reduction tech is worth experimenting with if you're watching non-HD channels on Freeview.

Ease of use

Toshiba rather shoots itself in the foot from the off by promoting its headline acts - BBC iPlayer and YouTube - on the TV's core user interface.

Accessing them without having to fire up Toshiba Places might appear a space-saving idea, and it is, but for some reason iPlayer can't be launched from the actual Toshiba Places platform that it's supposed to be the crowning glory of. The icon is there, but a 'sorry, mate, we've not bothered to link to that' message (or words to that effect) appears when it's selected.

There are other long-winded and annoying oddities here, too: to even exit Toshiba Places - and you likely won't be staying too long - requires pressing Exit, then confirming it. The live BBC iPlayer link lies under the Applications tab on the main menu.

In terms of their future usefulness, the Toshiba Places pages do have one saving grace - armed with a separate login, multiple members of the household can customise what services they see. The big drawback for now is that there actually isn't all that much to decide between, but this could develop into a genuinely useful approach.

Elsewhere, Toshiba Places is nothing special, although some shortcuts have been added up top - we can see why the likes of Acetrax, iConcerts (archived John Denver concerts! Yeah!) and Aupeo can be called up immediately without hunting for the link, but do we really need a one-touch option to change the language?

It adds to the impression that this user interface was created by visual designers only, and not road-tested as much as it should have been. It's slow, and feels entirely separate from the rest of the TV.

Typical of the UI's rudimentary design is the Freeview HD EPG, a seven-day affair that displays all information for 13 channels over two and a half hours, in what looks like a half-written spreadsheet. There's no thumbnail image of the current channel underneath, although audio continues.

It's also slow to navigate - it's not even possible to scan down a page at a time, which is a huge shame, considering that the HD channels are hidden 50 channels in.

Remote control

At least an inch too long and a touch slow to issue commands to its mother ship, the Toshiba 40RL858's remote control isn't one of our favourites. That's despite it being a winner in all other areas.

It sports a nicely weighted design that uses good quality and well-sized rubber buttons, and stores plenty of shortcut keys, as well as old-fashioned number buttons.

USB and Network Media Player

Dock a USB flash drive into the Toshiba 40RL858's sole USB slot and the TV immediately asks if you'd like to engage the Media Player, although it's just as easy to access via the Quick menu.

Photos are well provided for, with thumbnails displayed in a large 3 x 4 grid. When selected, they load with a variety of fade-in styles, with our test revealing support for both JPEG and BMP files, although not GIF or TIF formats.

Digital music fares well, too, with support for MP3, WMA and Apple Lossless M4A files. Tracks play when selected, but also kick-in after a few seconds if you merely hover over them. A largely blank full-screen is then displayed that lists the song title and artist beside a fairly low-res image of a quaver.

The highlight, though, is digital video - there's simply nothing we had in our locker that the Toshiba 40RL858 didn't play, which is a rare occurrence indeed. Everything from DivX AVI files, WMV and high-definition MKV and WMV HD (complete with audio) to MP4 and MPEG-2, various AVC HD and even a RealPlayer Media video all loaded quickly and played without problems.

The performance is slightly patchier over DLNA, with MKV not recognised.

Picture quality

We started on the Toshiba 40RL858's Hollywood 1 picture mode for the sake of simplicity. This avoids the occasional haloing of bright objects (something that a light sensor-driven feature called AutoView also appears to cause), although it's worth increasing the contrast and brightness a notch or two. But having done so, there's nowhere to save settings as a user preset. Doh!

With our Star Wars IV V VI Blu-ray boxset in tow, the Toshiba 40RL858's Edge LED-lit backlight appears as annoying as a Gungan, with some light leakage at the bottom and sides of the screen jarring during the dingy, muted scenes inside the Jawa sandcrawler on Tatooine. It's not an unusual sight on similarly priced sets, but it's nonetheless a hardware characteristic that's tricky to get around.

Those same scenes reveal a fairly profound attempt at black, although a lot of shadow detail is lost across C3PO and the other droids. Colour is generally good, but not as nuanced as a high-end set, with ColourMaster adding little.

The preceding handheld camera-driven scenes in Star Wars IV of R2D2 being hunted down by Jawas shows up a touch of shimmer around moving edges, and we also noticed a slight blur as R2D2 moves, although the picture is very obviously Full HD.

It's actually worth toning down Hollywood 1's sharpness setting to banish what little background noise there is on Blu-rays, and thereby achieving an even cleaner image.

Even with standard definition DVDs, it's worth sticking to the Hollywood 1 setting, which takes down the backlight sufficiently to hide the otherwise incessant picture noise in backgrounds.

Watching Djokovic Vs Murray from the Australian Open on BBC2, the MPEG digital noise reduction cleans up some of that noise, but adds some jagged edges.

Overall, standard definition sources are coped with reasonably well, with DVDs especially looking smooth and very watchable.

Switching to BBC HD for the rest of Djokovic Vs Murray, the immediately crisper, more precise picture is obvious, although a moving overhead shot of the Rod Laver Arena still produced diagonal jagged edges from the court markings.

As Murray rolled his body from side to side while awaiting Djokovic's serve, his face blurred. But aside from this, and other issues caused by the LCD panel, the Toshiba 40RL858 is a decent, good value canvas for watching Freeview HD fare.

Sound and value

Sound

Saddled with a depth of just 38mm, it's no surprise that Toshiba's audio boffins haven't come up with something approaching acceptable sound.

It's really no worse a performance than on 95 per cent of all flatscreen TVs on sale, but the Toshiba 40RL858's twin 10W speakers don't offer much in the aural department.

The crash, bang, wallop of a typical high octane movie just serves as a reminder of how great a proper audio setup is, and it's the same result from music, although dialogue-heavy TV is dealt with.

Value

With a reasonably versatile picture performance firmly putting the Toshiba 40RL858 in the mid-market in terms of ultimate quality, the asking price seems fair. Toshiba Places as a platform needs more thought as well as content, but it supplies us with BBC iPlayer and YouTube, which will suit most homes for now.

Do factor in the need for a separate sound bar or similar - the built-in audio on the Toshiba 40RL858 really is poor - although that's normal at this price, while a lack of Wi-Fi and only three HDMI ins could cause set up problems for some.

Verdict

Reasonably slim, fairly adept with all sources and with a smart TV platform that's at least nominally engaging, Toshiba's 40RL858 is a classic mid-range TV.

We liked

A nicely cinematic, yet sharp treatment of Blu-ray and clean standard definition sources if you're careful to tweak, the Toshiba 40RL858's digital dimension appeals. BBC iPlayer's presence is also pleasing, as is its comprehensive digital file support.

We disliked

It may be of metallic design, but the Toshiba 40RL858's plastic frame won't fool all. Ditto Toshiba Places, which is scarred by a lack of must-have content and some interface oddities. Sound is poor, and saving picture presets isn't possible, while light leakage from the flanks can be distracting. A solo USB, no built-in Wi-Fi and a fiddly Freeview HD EPG can all annoy too.

Final verdict

A good value TV for a living room, Toshiba's 40RL858 is a classic mid-range set whose attempt at a smart TV platform is the low point on an otherwise capable performer. What it lacks in ultimate quality and ease of use it makes up for with versatility.