Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830T-68U118 is a 11.6 inch travel friendly ultra portable laptop which might look like a Netbook to you but it is totally different. We have had a lot of premium Netbooks for this year and it is because the demand for them is increasing steadily. The small size factor of this product makes it look like a Netbook but inside, you have standard laptop hardware. Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830T-68U118 has a Core i7 processor, 500 GB hard drive, four GB DDR3 RAM and 11.6 inch display. On the sides, you have an HDMI port for connecting this laptop to a large HDTV. You won’t find an optical drive here and the company has dumped it in order to keep the body of this laptop slim. No optical drive makes this laptop much lighter than standard laptops. I was also pretty impressed with the tech specs of this laptop. There aren’t a lot of 11.6 inch notebooks in the market having a Core i7 CPU. Acer Aspire TimelineX 1830T-68U118 is a premium Netbook though and  [...]

The camcorder market is really crowded and hence the only way new products can survive is if they have some unique features or if they are offered at a lower price. The competition get stiffer in the pocket video cameras market and the Panasonic HM-TA1 will find it hard to make a cut simply because there are no unique features and the price too is not lowered down. There are plenty of camcorders and cameras available in the market and there are some multifunction gadgets like smartphones and the iPod Touch. I find no reason to recommend the TA1 ahead of all these gadgets. What’s worse is the design which is a very poor and there is not much to like. The camcorder is compact with cool video quality at least for bright conditions. However, the TA1 is unremarkable otherwise and has nothing new to offer as compared to existing products from Sony, Kodak and Flip. Panasonic HM-TA1 is a candybar minicamcorder  [...]

The number of Android smartphones in the market is steadily increasing and it is mainly because they are very popular amongst users. There have been a lot of rumors of a new HTC phone in the market and our sources say that HTC Vision will be coming soon. It is the successor to T-Mobile’s G1, which will be hard to forget as it was the first ever Android smartphone to hit the market. The company has not yet given the HTC Vision release date but it is rumored that T-Mobile will be covering it. However, we don’t know if the carrier is T-Mobile USA or T-Mobile Europe. Some say that T-Mobile USA will bring out the HTC Vision and will rechristen it to G1 Blaze. The phone will have a very powerful Qualcomm Snapdragon processor clocked at 1 GHz and the phone will have a WVGA display size of 3.7 inches. This handset is thought to be the first HSPA+ cell phone ever. Through HSPA+ you can get faster network performance of about 21 MBPS. HTC Vision release date has not been revealed yet but  [...]

Asus U35JC-A1 is the successor to UL30A which the manufacturer gave out last year. The looks are largely the same and not a lot has changed in terms of design. The lid has a lot of brushed metal which makes the laptop look very attractive. It has an angular look and overall, the design reminds me of those older laptops. For playing games, the Asus U35JC-A1 has Nvidia GeForce 310M graphics card which is not the fastest one out there but still fine for playing games at reduced settings. In fact, it is an entry level card. Maybe the manufacturer put in an entry level card to preserve the thin chassis. Also, it doesn’t make much sense to have a high end graphic card in a 13.3 inch laptop. The small screen would ruin the gaming experience. If you are a hard core gamer, I would recommend you to take a look at the Alienware series. In my lab tests, this graphic card could take games with all the settings lowered. At maximum settings, the Asus U35JC-A1 will quickly come  [...]

This TV is quite similar to LE8500 series and the only difference here is of the 3D compatibility. The LG Infinia 47LX9500 has full array LED backlight along with local dimming which is really cool. The 47 inch panel, according to the manufacturer, has 216 independent dimmable zones and the 55 inch panel in the same series has a few more. The advertised refresh rate is 480 Hz and the company says that this is due to the combination of standard 240Hz MEMC processing along with scanning backlight. Also noteworthy is that he LX9500 failed in my proper 1080p/24 processing unlike the LE8500. LG was the first TV maker to put in Netflix in their 2009 products. Other companies followed soon after and now most of them have it. There aren’t any major missing links on the LG Infinia 47LX9500 apart from lack of audio services like Slacker radio or Pandora.

Alpine INA-W900 is a pretty cool all in one dash receiver which gives you digital audio integration DVD playback, and navigation in a small user friendly seven inch screen. The only thing missing here is Bluetooth hands-free. The navigation mode on this system contrasts sharply with the video/audio mode. The nav screens graphics are less crisp and the resolution too is lower as compared to the music selection screens. The navigation portion text is quite good to read but when you view it side by side with AV screens, it looks low-quality. On the navigation main menu, you have three big icons for home, go to and info. You also have a smaller button here which leads to the map screen. It is always present irrespective of what is displayed on the menu screen. Pressing the Info button on the Alpine INA-W900 will give you a GPS, Dashboard, System, and Route. In the Dashboard option, you have a digital speedometer with assortment of the trip timers and historic average speed data. The GPS  [...]

This is the first time that Apple has revised the Apple TV and it has been a couple of years since the manufacturer released the original product. The company has done plenty of changes in design, functionality and price of the product. The device is very small and this can be attributed to the absence of hard disk drive inside. You cannot buy and download the videos now and the new Apple TV is limited to just video streaming now. Instead of Apple’s big iTunes store, you can choose from rental only subset of streaming content from Fox, BBC, ABC and Disney. You can rent an HD episode for 99 cents but I was disappointed to see that a lot of popular TV shows like Modern Family and House were not available for streaming when I reviewed the product. This holds true for CBS, NBC and most cable networks too. On the bright side, there are two options on the Apple TV. One is that you can buy content from Apple iTunes on the computer and then stream the video content from to the Apple TV  [...]

I haven’t started testing gaming desktops with DirectX 11 till now and was pretty curious to see how the F131 would do with Metro 2033, a very demanding game for DirectX11. I don’t use the game formally especially because Nvidia was involved in its development, just like ATI and AMD was involved with Tom Clancy's HAWX. I would have preferred a neutral title. Since the F131 is an Nvidia based gaming machine, the Metro 2033 will certainly work quite well. In regular gameplay, the experience was quite nice but when I pushed up the physics settings and image quality, the Maingear F131 gave me just 25 fps. The game is still playable but can slowdown occasionally. There are not a lot of games out there that the Maingear F131 will struggle with. There are a few that might challenge the machine but you can always tone down the settings for a good looking and smooth gaming experience. Because of the Intel X58 motherboard and the 3 PCI Express  [...]

Sony VPL-HW10 has excellent picture quality; the color reproduction is relatively accurate and the black levels too are relatively deep. However, the primary colors could have been better, I noticed a few artifacts with the 1080i sources but this is not unforgivable considering the price of the projector. The performance is better than the less expensive Sanyo PLV-Z2000. While setting up, I used the Standard mode for my tests. I initially started with Low color temperature. The quality was similar to that of broadcast standard. The bottom end was off so I tried to correct through the Custom color temperatures using the grayscale controls. Normal color space setting was also used since it came pretty close to ATSC specifications for red, blue and green primary colors. I was disappointed to see that they cannot be corrected. Overall color on the Sony VPL-HW10 is better than what I expected, the primary colors were better than most of the projectors in this price range. I also liked  [...]

Before I start this review, let me tell you one thing straight. This product will work only on Mac which has a Mini DisplayPort. If you own a older Mac or PC, this display is not for you. This monitor has fantastic performance and looks aesthetically appealing too. Games and movies looked great in my lab tests but I was most impressed by the way it handled the fonts. The screen has a glossy coating and the fonts have smoothness that is rarely seen and this makes doing everyday tasks a better experience. This monitor can also be connected to a MacBook Pro, it comes with MagSafe connector which can be used to charge the laptop when the monitor is connected to it. My only gripe here is that the screen is highly reflective due to the glossy screen. The ergonomics options too are quite rare, you only get a ten degree back tilt. The price of this panel is $1,000 which is a bit high considering there much cheaper monitors in the market. I won’t recommend this panel even to professionals because  [...]