A touch of magic?

If you've used a MacBook Pro or MacBook over the last couple of years then what we'll be looking at in this review of the Apple Magic Trackpad is old news.?We say that because the technology is the same, the experience is the same, and the usability is the same; anything you can do on the trackpads of the latest MacBook or MacBook Pro laptop range, you can do here. So do you really need to buy this ?59 accessory?

Rather than rush out with a "first look" or "hands-on review", we've played with one for the last 24 hours in a standard office environment to see how it compares against a mouse, and whether it really offers much of a different experience.

The device itself oozes typical Apple minimalist design. It's a sheet of aluminium that sits on your desk at a slight angle waiting to be touched, and coated with a wear-resistant glass surface. The angle is created by the battery tube at the top, which takes two AA batteries. Apple claims this will be enough to power it for around 2 months.?That tube houses the power switch and the gubbins to make it all work. Aside from a green light that only lights up when it is pairing, there is very little to report here.

While the top is metal the underside is white plastic - identical to the Apple Bluetooth keyboard. In fact design-wise it is identical in its approach.?It's the same brushed metal on top, the same angle, the same depth, the same height, in fact you can put the two together and pretend they are one piece.

Unlike most other computer peripherals, the surface is free from buttons. But you still get the ability to left or right click, thanks to the small feet on the leading edge of the underside.?It's an incredibly simple and clever idea that works just like the MacBook Pro's system - you just click on the trackpad without realising there is no button.

The Magic Trackpad is connected to your Mac via Bluetooth, and the only other requirement here is that you are running OSX 10.6.4.?Connect the device to your Mac and at first you'll believe that you've bought a rather uninspiring and expensive trackpad that doesn't do much.?

Just perform a software update (if you haven't already) and empower your Magic Trackpad to deliver on its?promises.?A quick restart later and you're ready to tinker if you so wish, although for the most part you won't have to.

The new software gives you the power to scroll, rotate, pinch, open and close, screen zoom, and secondary click when using two fingers.

Add a third finger and you can swipe to navigate and drag windows around, while four fingers up and down opens Expose and swiping left and right gives you the ability to change applications.

Don't panic you can just use the one finger. The travel of your finger on the trackpad is more than enough to cover your screen within a single motion and that saves you having to keep lifting your finger.

There are other options with your single finger; i.e. tap to click (which can be turned off) and secondary click zoned into the bottom right corner, for example: we found a two finger click was easier, but there are choices so you can set it to your preference.?You can adjust tracking, double-click and scrolling speed as well.

In practice, and it really is the same as the MacBook Pro trackpad, although we found it easier to use three and four finger movements due to the increased real-estate.?The glass is?beautifully?smooth on your fingers and the click, which can be done from anywhere with very little effort, is responsive and you don't really have to press that hard.

With the resting feet responsible for the clicking part of the trackpad you will have to have it on a level surface. We tried balancing it on a leg - it just doesn't work - but you can use it up to 10 metres away. We're sure that swapping trackpads around in the office will lead to a great deal of hilarity.

Verdict:

So desktop users should you ditch your mouse? The mouse might be ugly but it will allow you to whizz around the desktop quickly and it is what you are used to. This brings with it a host of new functions and we feel it is better than the company's Magic Mouse offering.

At ?59 you really want to make sure this is magical enough to replace your current mouse and we would have to say this comes down to how much you enjoy using a trackpad. For MacBook users wanting to bring that touch experience to their desktop Mac, or if dock your MacBook at your desk, then you probably don't need convincing. For us, this gives you the chance to break the excellent touchpad experience out of your notebook and get it on your desk.

If you spend most of your time on the road, with a MacBook Pro in tow, you probably don't need to lug around an extra trackpad and you won't be able to use it fully without a surface to put it on.

For us this is a mouse replacement, but it's worth heading down to your local Apple Store and trying it out for yourself.

Tags: Hardware Apple Apple Magic Trackpad Mice Mice And Keyboards

Apple Magic Trackpad originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 29 Jul 2010 08:05:40 +0100

The perfect travel zoom?

Cameras with big zooms yet handily pocket sized bodies - colloquially known as "travel zooms" - are being pumped out by manufacturers at a rate of knots, with recent recommended examples to be found amongst Panasonic's TZ series and in Canon's PowerShot SX210 IS.

The trade off in each case is that a longer internally folded lens necessitates a slightly broader depth than less ambitious 3x or 5x zoom compacts. And here a 10x optical zoom - providing a 25-250mm equivalent focal range in 35mm film terms - gives rise to the Sony Cyber-shot HX5's overall dimensions of 102.9 x 57.7 x 24.6mm and a weight of 170g excluding battery and card.

So how do you make this zoom compact stand out from the crowd? While Sony hasn't gone to town on the headline resolution, sticking at a sensible 10.2 effective megapixels from a 1/2.4-inch Exmor R CMOS sensor and offering low light sensitivity up to ISO 3200, this is coupled with a high quality "G" series lens.

The HX5's other main talking points are GPS tracking with nifty on-screen compass that shows the direction the camera was pointing when the photo was taken. The idea is that the location of geotagged images can be viewed when you're back from travelling as online maps, aided and abetted by the bundled Picture Motion Browser PC software.

Despite the marginally wider camera proportions - comparable in this example to a cigarette packet - the HX5 will still squeeze comfortably into a trouser pocket, and in being the usual solid-feel mix of metal and plastic it's more attractively styled than Canon's SX210 IS, matching Panasonic's likewise competing TZ family for looks. We had the sober black version in for review, but the HX10 is also available with a gold garnish.

The HX5 powers up for action in just less than 2 seconds, lens extending to maximum 25mm wide-angle setting - primed for any landscape shot that happens to present itself - the rear 3-inch, 4:3 ratio fixed LCD blinking into life to enable shot composition.

The screen is used for both framing and review in the expected absence of optical viewfinder, visibility being clear enough that we weren't reduced to cupping a hand around the screen when using the camera outdoors in the summer sun. While given the size of the screen it instinctively feels like this should be a touchscreen model - something we're becoming more used to in every variety of gadget - it isn't, shooting modes selected via a conventional dial on the top plate.

For those aiming to shoot in bright conditions, as an aid for shooting against the sun when you don't otherwise want to use fill-in flash, Sony has for the first time implemented an automatic exposure-adjusting Backlight Correction HDR (High Dynamic Range) feature on the HX5. Taking inspiration from similar functionality introduced on the company's Alpha DSLRs, the camera takes two images in rapid succession - so quick that in daylight you won't need a tripod, one biasing exposure for shadows, the other highlights - and combines them in camera to produce a single image that manages to avoid looking unnatural.

Press the shutter release button halfway in regular single shot mode and AF points illuminate in green onscreen, a simultaneous beep confirming that focus and exposure have been determined. Take the picture and a full resolution JPEG is committed to memory in 2-3 seconds. All timings are more than respectable for a camera in this price bracket, and generally the HX5 is as responsive to each button press, function navigation and selection as we'd have hoped for.

As, thankfully, with all the most recent Cyber-shots, there's a choice of using the widely compatible SD/SDHC cards or the manufacturer's own memory Stick Pro Duo; both sharing the one slot. Alternatively there's a 45MB internal capacity to fall back on if you've forgotten to buy the optional media at the same time as the camera.

On the HX5 we also get Sony's visually impressive Sweep Panorama function, more sophisticated than competing versions (Fujifilm's mostly excellent HS10 for example) in that it can now "intelligently" exclude moving subjects to help avoid blurred, disjointed overlaps when the process ends to form a single elongated shot. Panning left to right as instructed by the on-screen arrow, we tested this feature in London's busy Oxford Circus interchange and, although we experienced some ugly overlaps on occasion, on the whole achieved pleasingly seamless results.

Add in Full HD 1920 x 1080 pixels AVCHD format video clips in stereo - this feature also located via the shooting mode dial though possessing its own separate red record button top right of the camera back - and, coupled with the above, makes the HX5's ?299 asking price seems very fair. Unlike you might expect though, such current must-have functionality hasn't hindered or over-complicated operation. As the outward appearance indicates, at its heart this is a point-and-shoot model, with intelligent/smart auto control the most prominent of the 10-strong options on its top-mounted shooting mode wheel.

The snapshot nature of the camera inevitably means functions are biased towards not just landscapes but also taking people pictures - self-portraits at arm's length included. A new face detection-equipped Portrait setting for the latter ensures the HX5 checks you're adequately framed before the camera's shutter fires automatically.

Obviously with any camera with a longer lens reach intended for use handheld, camera shake can be a problem, resulting in blurred shots. Rather than just relying on software to boost shutter speed and ISO to combat this, the Sony more effectively utilises optical image stabilisation, avoiding telltale softness even when shooting at maximum telephoto (full zoom) setting. Stabilisation kicks in when shooting video, not just stills, so, along with the fact that the near-silent optical zoom can also be accessed in movie mode, the Sony comes slightly closer than most to being able to stake a claim as a jack-of-all-trades "dual" camera.

Luckily, with images downloaded and viewed on your desktop, photo quality is almost a match for the HX5's specification list, with warm, well saturated colour and plenty of detail delivered by regular single shot stills mode, as our test images testify. In terms of critical sharpness, results from the Sweep Panorama function are not as impressive as those from the most recent Sony NEX models - because here the panorama is in effect a video grab rather than a sequence of high-resolution stills - but they're still undeniably fun.

Verdict:

The Sony Cyber-shot HX5 is a competently constructed and thoughtfully featured compact at a keenly competitive price. For the amateur photographer wanting both portability and versatility in the one device - without actually trading up further and spending twice the outlay on a Micro Four Thirds type hybrid camera - the above combination ensures that the HX5 is well worth any expectant traveller seeking out. The only feature it conceivably misses out on at this level is the new 3D Sweep Panorama functionality added to the most recently announced trio of Sony Cyber-shot point and shoots. But unless you're the proud owners of 3D-enabled TVs to view the results on, the HX5 does more than enough to justify a place in your pocket, without battering the wallet next to it.

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Tags: Cameras Compact cameras Digital cameras Sony Sony Cyber-shot HX5 10 megapixels

Sony Cyber-shot DSC-HX5 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 28 Jul 2010 16:31:16 +0100

This 30x super zoom looks and handles like a DSLR - but is it as good?

The Fujifilm FinePix HS10 ties with its direct rival, the Olympus' SP-800UZ, for offering the world's longest zoom range on a non interchangeable lens camera. The Fuji - alternatively known as a bridge model because feature-wise it plugs the gap between point and shoot pocket compact and more professional digital SLR, closely resembling the latter - has a robust-feel 30x optical zoom bolted on its front.

This provides a 24-720mm equivalent focal range in 35mm film terms, enabling close up portraits and wide angle landscapes to be captured with the one device (and for this reason such bridge models are also known as "all in ones"). It's ably backed up with sensor shift image stabilisation to help avoid blur.

Though the headline resolution is a "mere" 10.3 effective megapixels - the argument being that lens pixels crammed onto its smaller sensor (here 1/2.3-inch CMOS) makes for clearer, less noisy images - the HS10 is currently Fujifilm's flagship model for photo enthusiasts. We haven't seen a DSLR from the brand for years, and it seems content instead to concentrate its efforts on delivering souped-up compacts. It might have been nice, therefore, to have seen a triple use "EXR" sensor being deployed here, as in the recently reviewed F80EXR, to further help it stand out from the competition.?

With a flick of the on/off switch that handily encircles the large and springy shutter release button, the camera powers up for the first shot in just less than 2 seconds, locking onto target and determining focus and exposure in a further second. Unlike Olympus' challenger, the Fujifilm HS10's zoom can be manually operated with a twist of the wrist. Very useful this is too, making for quicker, more precise compositional adjustment than having to use a lever or switch and gingerly tab forward or back to achieve similar framing.

In this way it's an improvement on not just the mechanically operated Olympus, but also current big zoom alternatives from Nikon (P100), Pentax (X90), Kodak (Z981) and Samsung (WB5000).

Going one better, just behind the rubberised zoom ring is a manual focus ring; an enlarged central portion of the image provided on-screen to aid adjustments in shooting modes other than the ever-reliable full auto. However since this enlarged section becomes quite pixelated, it's difficult to wholly rely on it to achieve critical sharpness.

There is of course a trade off for the HS10's longer lens. It means that the camera is physically larger and weightier than all of the above-mentioned rivals, the Olympus being a good third less in size. On the other hand there will be those who admire its chunky entry-level DSLR-like dimensions of 130.6 x 90.7 x 126mm and body weight of 636g - due in part to four bog standard AA batteries inserted at the base of the handgrip for power.

So while it might not be the most portable of big zoom options and you'll need to make use of the provided shoulder strap, the HS10 certainly feels built to last and in that respect partly justifies the ?399 asking price. Though you'll of course want to budget extra for a set of rechargeables.

While the cost matches a DSLR proper, so too do some of the camera's features, such as nifty eye sensors located below its electronic viewfinder that automatically switch the EVF on, and the larger 3-inch LCD below off, as you bring your eye level with it. This means that a dedicated button for switching between the two - as found on rival models - isn't required.

The capture of unadulterated (by the camera) RAW files is also offered alongside common, compressed JPEG files, as on a DSLR proper. The RAW feature has to be first enabled via the camera's set-up menu, where it feels rather hidden away. Otherwise the factory default is JPEG, with a wide choice of ratios and compression levels, including the regulars of 4:3, 3:2 and 16:9.

The HS10 additionally offers the best of compact technology in that Full HD movie clips can be recorded in stereo, with a one-touch red record button located top right of the angle adjustable LCD monitor on the camera's back, and mini HDMI output to be found at its side alongside regular USB/AV out port.

Like Sony offerings, the HS10's LCD can be folded outwards from the body and angled up or down, but cannot be flipped out at right angles to it. Nor can it be folded so that the screen is facing inwards to the body for added protection. Still, some flexibility is welcome and the screen still allows for a greater degree of low or high angle shots than otherwise possible with a fixed alternative.?

Save for video itself, shooting options are selected via a large dial set into the camera's sloped top plate, with a DSLR-style command wheel alongside. There's a scene and subject recognising auto mode alongside regular auto for consistently impressive point and shoot simplicity, or more experienced owners can take advantage of the creative quartet of program, shutter priority, aperture priority, and manual shooting modes, which afford access to a greater variety of personally rewarding image adjustment options.

A feature the HS10 also shares with a growing number of Sony compacts - including its NEX-5 - and located on the same mode dial, is a panorama function that automatically stitches together a series of images to form a single "grab" after the user finishes sweeping through an arc. Very useful for travel photography and if shooting landscapes that even employing the full extent of the 24mm equivalent wide angle lens fails to do justice to.

It's not quite as sophisticated as Sony's increasingly refined Sweep Panorama version - moving subjects can come out blurred or disjointed here, otherwise it's fairly cohesive for static subjects - but again, whilst you wouldn't buy the camera for this feature alone it's a welcome extra to have.

Over our test period the HS10 delivered warm, albeit natural looking colour and mainly even exposures, though images were inevitably occasionally soft when shooting handheld and utilising almost the full extent of the lens' maximum telephoto zoom setting. There is some pixel fringing visible between areas of high contrast, but it's relatively subtle.

The self-stitching panorama feature is a fun addition, and the Pro Low Light mode and ability to give images a chrome-like appearance - features borrowed from the manufacturer's previously released pioneering compacts - ensure that, fixed lens or not, you won't soon exhaust the HS10's creative possibilities.

Verdict:

Okay, though the Fujifilm FinePix HS10 looks like a DSLR, it's not a DSLR. Whilst this means images aren't quite as pin sharp as an interchangeable lens alternative, non professionals will well be able to live with that in exchange for a much broader range of creative possibilities than the pocket camera they may be upgrading from.

Let's also not forget that the HS10 is a far, far cheaper all-encompassing option than what it would cost to equip a digital SLR proper with a paparazzi-like equivalent lens. Add in the fact that this bridge model otherwise offers DSLR-like (or rather DSLR "lite") features and handling, and even more experienced users won't readily get bored.

Ultimately though, whether or not the HS10 is for you largely depends on whether you will actually make use of the broad compositional scope on offer. If you won't, for the price, an entry level DSLR would be a sounder investment. If you do go for the Fuji however, it should provide years of service.

Tags: Cameras Compact cameras Digital cameras Fujifilm Fujifilm FinePix HS10 10 megapixels

Fujifilm FinePix HS10 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 27 Jul 2010 08:26:16 +0100

The must have of the summer?

It's almost traditional to start a Dragon Quest review by contrasting the enormous popularity of the series in Japan, where it's a phenomenon on the scale of Star Wars or Harry Potter; with its reception over here, where it's never found the mass appeal of Pokemon or Naruto. Well, it might be time to kiss that reliable opening goodbye, because Dragon Quest IX deserves to make a splash in Europe. Not only is it one of the biggest and best games on the DS, it's a great example of the Japanese RPG at its very best.

Releasing the next chapter of a mega-selling franchise as a handheld exclusive was certainly risky, but the risk has paid off handsomely. With its bright, cartoon-styled 3D graphics and menu driven combat, Dragon Quest turns out to be a natural for the DS, and the game excels in its use of the touchscreen for movement, selecting commands and handling battles. What's more, the pace and structure of the game is perfect for handheld gaming. Dragon Quest IX is a game of enormous scope and depth, yet one which you can pick up and play in a spare moment and still feel like you're getting somewhere. The problem is going to be noticing when you hit your bus/train stop.

After the over-egged bombast of Final Fantasy XIII, the plotline here feels lightweight, but arguably in a good way. This time our hero is a kind of novice guardian angel, sent down from a heavenly overworld to look after the citizens of a tiny mountain village. No sooner have you found your feet, however, than a disaster strikes the world above, leaving you bereft of wings and halo, and stuck on terra firma.

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Being a helpful sort you restart your labours anyway, and it soon becomes apparent that your initial task is to harvest goodwill just by wandering around the game world, doing good. As the game develops, this becomes the main theme. While there are major events going on that affect both the celestial realms and the world beneath, your main focus is working your way through a set of smaller storylines - a bit like a sword and sorcery version of the Littlest Hobo.

It sounds strange, but it works. One hour you might spend helping a cursed knight put his soul at ease, the next you might spend helping clear a town of an evil contagion. Dragon Quest IX is often silly, sentimental and slight, but then that's also a big part of its charm. It's a game that makes you feel good, and if your snobbery about fighting what appears to be armed cucumbers or flying pythons gets in the way of that, then more fool you. In fact, everything from the monster design to the plotlines to the translation shows the game revelling in a light-hearted, knowing approach to the mores of fantasy adventure; if you love the genre, you'll find a lot to make you chuckle here.

What's more, this is a superbly accessible RPG. Superficially, the combat is the most traditional, turn-based fare imaginable, but it's fast-paced and enjoyable, and features like auto-strategies for computer-controlled party members definitely help keep things moving if you don't want to select every attack and defensive move yourself. The presentation of the fights is also less dated than in past adventures, with some of the cinematic camera movements and flourishes that Final Fantasy fans take for granted. Other changes also remove some old pains from the Dragon Quest experience. Items that allow you to move instantly from place to place are now freely and cheaply available, and the wandering monsters that have made so many Japanese RPGS a chore have been replaced by monsters you can see coming and, in some cases, avoid. The game's one big fault is that it doesn't always do a brilliant job of explaining all this stuff to newcomers.

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Best of all, Dragon Quest IX is rich and rewarding. All RPGs thrive on the cycle of killing monsters/sacking dungeons to level up/buying better gear to kill bigger monsters/sack tougher dungeons, and this one is no exception. In fact, it's horrendously compulsive. The more you play, the more you also find other features you might not expect from a handheld RPG, including crafting (with a handy alchemy pot that turns herbs and monstrous by-products into unique items), side-quests and a detailed, flexible class system. There are hours and hours of gameplay packed in here, with masses to see, do and explore. To be honest, you could buy Dragon Quest right now and not need another game all summer.

The other interesting thing is how Dragon Quest IX handles parties. Instead of introducing characters to the storyline and throwing a party together for you, the game has you recruiting heroes at the local inn. Computer-controlled heroes, meanwhile, can be levelled up, equipped and rested as you wish, allowing you to build a stable of heroes for different needs, or just concentrate on a core trio of supporters.

However, Dragon Quest IX differs from other DS RPGs in that you can also use the inn to open a portal to allow other players into your world, or enter that of another player. In effect, you're getting drop-in, drop-out multiplay, with players in your world free to wander, quest or offer assistance as they see fit (your individual progress is saved beforehand to stop them from messing things up for you). You gain experience while helping other players, and also the chance to show off your high-end armour, weapons and custom items - and who can resist a bit of that?

Sadly, the multiplayer features are only available over a local Wi-Fi connection, which relies on someone else in your immediate locality having a DS, a copy of the game, and the willingness to open a portal into their game or yours. We can imagine this going down well in school playgrounds or amongst groups of DS-owning mates, but you can't help wishing that Square-Enix and Nintendo would set up a proper online service so that we could all log-in and get involved.

Verdict:

Despite this one complaint, Dragon Quest IX shines as one of the richest, deepest and most fun RPGs ever seen on a handheld platform, and there's no question in our mind that it is the essential DS game of the summer. Even solo players will get tens of hours of fun out of it, and those who get the chance to sample the multi-player mode can comfortably double that. The cartoon graphics and lightweight, silly style won't suit everyone, but if Dragon Quest is to have a breakout hit over here, then the ninth instalment is easily up to the task.

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Tags: Gaming Nintendo DS Nintendo Square Enix Dragon Quest IX RPG

Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:45:40 +0100

Let's get fruity

The Philips HR1861 juicer has received a number of awards and recommendations from the likes of Good Housekeeping and Which? But will it survive the rigours of the Pocket-lint.com test kitchen?

This juicer is of the centrifugal variety, so sitting at the core of the machine is a spinning juice extractor. This shreds the fruit as you throw it into the top, spins the fruit to fling out the juice through a fine mesh, which runs out the funnel into the jug. The waste fruit pulp is thrown into the large hopper at the back for easy disposal.

The main body of the juicer is finished in brushed aluminium, so you can scrub it clean without worrying about scratching it up, whilst most of the rest of the parts are plastic, so they can be easily thrown into a dishwasher. The main centrifugal part will sometimes need a good scrub and the supplied brush is the best thing for this: don't try using a sponge as it will just get shredded…

Little touches make the HR1861 more at home in your sophisticated kitchen. The feet on the bottom are little suckers, so it won't move around once you get into the business of juicing all that fruit. It looks sensational too, and the aluminium finish doesn't just make it look good: it also stands the test of time. Some of the cheaper silver plastic finishes used on lesser worktop appliances will get tainted by the fruit run-off over time, but the HR1861 doesn't suffer from that problem.

There are two speeds on offer from the chunky switch on the side. Slower speeds are recommended for softer fruits (although don't try and juice bananas, mangos or avocados, because they are too soft) and higher speeds will deal with harder fruits and vegetables.

The large chute means you don't have to do much preparation, so you can drop in a whole apple or pear for example and it will give you your juice at the bottom. Fruits with more substantial skins, like pineapples, will need preparing in advance before dropping them in.

If you are a citrus fiend then the HR1861 might not be for you. There is no citrus attachment so it doesn’t give you that "freshly squeezed" orange result. If you are mostly interested in orange juice then a simple citrus juicer might be a better bet, but that said, once you have peeled an orange you can just throw it in the top and you still get juice out of it.

In operation the size and weight of the HR1861 means it isn't as noisy when turned on as some might be, although there is no avoiding the fact that juicing is a fairly noisy process. The results are very good too, with the vast majority of the waste fruit being left fairly dry in the hopper at the back.

We tried an old Pocket-lint favourite: pineapple, carrot, red chilli, a squeeze of lime and some chopped coriander, great for clearing your head and getting you going. The HR1861 is also endorsed by "Juice master" Jason Vale and a copy of his book is bundled in the box to get you started and thinking beyond your simple apple juice.

You also get a jug to catch your juice in which has a foam filter, so if you are juicing a large number of apples, this will help separate your juice and prevent you pouring a glass with a massive foamy head on the top.

Verdict:

The Philips HR1861 performs excellently and looks fantastic, being up to the job of regular juicing. You can get juicers for less which offer an almost identical centrifugal system, but the size (if you have enough worktop space in your kitchen) makes this model a great choice.?

Citrus fiends would be better off with a dedicated citrus juicer (or both, if you're really extravagant), but otherwise there is very little to fault with the Philips HR1861.

Tags: Home And Kitchen Kitchen gadgets Philips Philips HR1861

Philips HR1861 juicer originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 23 Jul 2010 22:27:36 +0100

Funky music?

It would be ambitious to say that iRiver has ever “nailed” the MP3 player market with a killer device, but it's certainly been mentioned in the same breath as some of the major players over the years, so it was with some intrigue that we noted the recent release of the USB-drive T8.

There can be little doubt that combining the convenience of portable storage with the ability to play back tunes in such a portable manner has its benefits, presuming you're unwilling or unable to utilise a mobile phone for such purpose of course, so we were expecting iRiver to at least satisfy a relatively small niche demographic with its latest release.

The T8 is styled like a typical memory stick with a removable cap and choice of 2GB and 4GB capacities. A small, monochrome screen and 3.5mm jack distinguishes it from the blandness of a typical flash drive, along with side-mounted volume, power and a hold switch and front-facing directional pad for navigation.

It's also available in a range of colours and features that have now become typical additions in the form of an FM radio, voice recorder, and the ability to combine the two to save radio broadcasts to the internal memory.

It also offers less common features such as lyric support and the ability to rate songs and has what appears to be a healthy number of audio environment settings, graphic equaliser control and sound modes to boost an audio range for a specific purpose.

All of these features are now fairly standard, however, so there's nothing on paper to truly distinguish it from a swathe of rivals or, indeed, the capabilities of a decent media-oriented mobile phone.

We're left with judging performance in deciding whether or not to recommend the T8 then, and unfortunately it doesn't do itself too many favours in this area. In testing the device with a decent set of ear-buds we were actually quite let down by the sound quality, which ranges from overly tinny to undesirably distorted depending on the type of music you're playing.

Navigating through the audio customisation options isn't particularly easy either, and this goes for much of the rest of operation as using the directional pad to adjust settings and browse around is rarely straightforward, though it does get easier with practice. Tweaking the various sound modes was of limited use here, and in many cases it's either difficult to discern a change at all or difficult to establish a mode that works.

There are also a couple of niggling frustrations with operation that threaten to undermine the device entirely. While the lack of ID3tag supported and enforced folder/file browsing is forgiveable in a low-capacity device, it's not possible to browse to a "now playing" screen after navigating away from this area to search a library or access some of the other features, so returning to a tune involves navigating back through your tracklist and restarting the song from scratch. This sounds like a minor grievance, but in practice is rather frustrating and restrictive and certainly has no place in a modern market.

Elsewhere the FM radio did a fairly poor job of picking up a suitable number of stations in our area, and with no manual tuning available you're often left with three or four detected presets to browse. Recording FM radio to the internal storage and using the device as a voice recorder does work well however, though as "peripheral" features we can't imagine this would swing it for most.?

Verdict:

The iRiver T8 will, by its very nature, appeal to a fairly limited market, but its inability to perform adequately as an MP3 player or FM radio means that we're loathe to recommend it even if this is the sort of device you're after. There are far more capable alternatives of this type on offer from rivals, especially from a performance standpoint, leaving the T8 with precious few saving graces.

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Tags: Audio MP3 players iRiver iRiver T8

iRiver T8 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 23 Jul 2010 09:04:18 +0100

Is that a 5-incher in your pocket?

What are you Dell Streak? Are you a phone? Are you a tablet? Are you just an Android thing? Where do you sit in the order of must-have gadgets out there, and what do you think your primary purpose is??

These are the questions we find ourselves asking when faced with the Dell Streak. Of course with a screen size of 5 inches, it battles against the likes of the Archos 5 Internet Tablet, but betters it with the inclusion of mobile phone connectivity.?

At 5 inches its nearest cousins are phones like HTC Evo, the Samsung Galaxy S and the Sony Ericsson Xperia X10, but with an extra inch of screen, the Dell Streak isn't exactly pocket-friendly. We’ve been making calls with the thing and holding it against your face not only makes your hand ache, but feels a little daunting, even if the call quality is perfectly fine.

At 5 inches it doesn't give you the expansive screen of the iPad either, so it isn't as adept at browsing the Internet, although it is easier to slip in a bag, so it's more portable. Packing 3G connectivity makes it practical for staying connected on the move, but do you want to carry something like this, if you have a device an inch or so smaller which does practically the same thing, like the HTC Desire?

We can't help thinking that the Dell Streak becomes a connected companion for someone who wants a phone for making calls, like a basic Nokia handset, and wants a more accomplished device for consuming media around the home or on their travels. Or someone who always uses a headset for calling. All of which makes it, in our minds, a little niche.

But these musings won’t stop you from wanting one because it is lovingly designed, looking like a large BlackBerry Storm, with sensitively curving ends that make it a pleasure to hold. It is designed from the outset to be held in landscape format. It is simply too big to be able to hold in your hand and use your thumb to type as you might on a touchscreen smartphone.

It measures 152.9 x 79.1 x 9.98mm, so it is certainly skinny and at 220g it is light enough to hold. There is no stand, which we are sure some would call out for, but the design around the back may well be spoilt by such an addition from an aesthetics point of view.

Finished in gunmetal grey, the matte back features a large removable plate to access the innards, where your SIM card and microSD will go, along with the 1530mAh battery. Currently O2 has the exclusive on the Dell Streak and we tested it on its network where you can get it on contract, but you can also pick one up SIM free from Dell directly.

Other details on the back of the Streak include the external speaker and the 5-megapixel camera accompanied by a double LED "flash". Around the sides of the Streak you'll find a bespoke port for charging and syncing in the absence of the conventional Micro-USB on the bottom, while the top edge offers up power, camera, volume and a 3.5mm headphone socket.

The front of the Streak is where the action is of course, and you'll find three touch-sensitive controls, offering home, menu and back. There is also a front-facing 640 x 480 camera, ideal for all those video calls you don't make. And then you come to the screen.

We've seen a lot of hot air blowing around screens recently, like Apple's Retina Display and Samsung's Super AMOLED, but the Dell Streak copes fine. It is constructed from Gorilla Glass, meaning it should be tough. With an 800 x 480 pixel resolution it matches most of the top Android devices, but doesn't quite give you the sharpness of the Apple iPhone 4. Like the others it does have a glossy finish, so reflections will be a problem and viewing it next to a window or outdoors will never be the best.

But it manages to present the Android OS with plenty of clarity and it really is a very responsive display, reacting to touches as we'd want it to. The typing experience is good because you have so much space and in this instance, Dell has seen fit to include a numberpad to the right of the on-screen keyboard and a comprehensive array of alternative characters, so you don't need to dive in to alternate key sets as you do on many other devices.

The predictive elements don't seem quite as snappy as HTC's, but we managed to get along just fine with entering text on it. Given the size, the portrait keyboard is also easy to use, although as we've said, one-handed operation is nigh on impossible.?

The Streak runs Android v1.6, which is a little disappointing and instantly takes the shine off things as you don't get quite as many native features as the latest Android systems offer you. Dell is promising an upgrade however (is there a handset manufacturer who isn't?) so we'll have to wait and see on that one.

Dell has also customised the interface a little, so you have customisable home pages (called Homes funnily enough), which you can customise to your liking, with a selection of widgets at your disposal. Our review sample came with wallpaper of the Millennium Dome/The O2, with three images making up the backdrop to these pages. It's a shame they can't be used to slow background scrolling like HTC and Samsung, as you'll find odd pages with images that don't match: a petty thing, but the devil is in the details.

But otherwise we like what Dell has done here. The top notification bar has been put to good use, taking advantage of the space available and divided into different areas. First up you have the applications menu, which drops down into recently used apps, then a second press brings up the full list. It might seem a little fiddly, but if you are a creature of habit (as well as dropping app shortcuts onto the home pages) then it works well enough. The second area lets you add and remove home pages, as well as jump to them - a little like HTC's Leap feature.

The third area is your notification area and rather than your normal Android pull-down bar, you press and the list pops-up. The fourth area is your status area, a press here pulls up a menu to turn on or off the wireless connections, gives you network and battery status and set alarms. Finally you have the date and time.

These home screens only work in landscape, they don't rotate for portrait use, although once you get into applications, they will rotate depending on how you want to hold the Streak, with keyboards flipping round as you need them.

The standby/lock screen is a little disappointing. To unlock the screen you don't need to swipe to unlock, you merely have to press the menu soft button, so it might be worth using the on-screen pattern security to stop you unlocking the device with a simple touch. Standard "Screen Locked" window doesn't say you have received messages or anything else, which would have been useful.

Sitting at the core of the Streak is a 1GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon processor, which gives the Streak the power it needs to zip around. We saw very little sign of lag when opening apps and navigating around the device, even with a number of applications open and running. The processor is backed by 512MB RAM and we found it ran nicely for normal tasks.?

It's a surprise that natively Dell hasn't made the most of these specifications. There is no real support for HD playback, although we found that RockPlayer had a stab at some HD video, with MKV playing smoothly, but some MP4 files dropped lots of frames to become unwatchable - of course, with so many variations in video, some will work and some won't. Likewise there is no HD capture from the video camera - you only get a maximum resolution of 640 x 480 which sets the Streak behind the curve.

Given the great screen, we'd also expect more in the way of media support. It had no problem with SD MPEG4 and AVI files from the default media player, but we would have expected a wider remit - DivX and MKV for example - although the beauty of Android is you can step around this problem with third-party apps.

We'd also have liked to see the Streak be a little more network savvy. There is no sign of skills shown by the Samsung Galaxy S with its All Share application, so again, if you want to stream content from your home network, you'll have to turn to a third party. Little details like this would have strengthened the offering from Dell and perhaps defined what the Streak should be. There is no FM radio either, a basic thing, but one that commuters?appreciate.

Dell offers its twist on Facebook and Twitter with a widget, but as we've seen from the likes of Sony Ericsson with the Xperia X10, this isn't backed up with real applications, so you'll have to download the Facebook app and a Twitter client to really use these tools. Pressing on a Twitter or Facebook entry in the widgets will take you through to the browser version of those services, which you may well be happy with. Remember too that the official Twitter client from Android isn't compatible with v1.6, so you'll be looking at one of the third-party apps again.

The contacts experience is fairly rich, with information pouring in from your Google account and from Facebook, although we couldn't find a way to merge this information, so you may end up with duplicate contacts. It doesn't go as far as HTC Sense or Motoblur in feeding all the information through one channel.

As such, there isn't a link-up online photo albums, but we like the simple timeline that the photo and video browser offers. It also incorporates pinch zooming and swiping, so it's great for showing off your photos. We feel it could do with a few more navigation options. You can filter whether you are viewing photos, videos, etc, but we'd like to be able to see folders, so you could browse a collection of images. You can share photos via Facebook, Flickr and Picasa however.

The music player gives you nice big icons of album art, and the widget will also show this, with the widget offering up play/pause and skip controls without having to dive into the application. There is only one external speaker and it is rather brutal. When we tested it on a conference call, it wasn't clear enough to hold a decent conversation. Its position on the back means you are likely to cover it with your fingers when holding the Streak and it will be blocked if you place it on a surface, so it's an awkward experience. We'd have liked to see stereo speakers, again to strengthen the media offering.

But the reality is that you are likely to use headphones. A 3.5mm jack takes care of that and there is Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR if you prefer to go wireless. The bundled headphones are of reasonable quality, but easily and cheaply bettered. On the wireless connectivity front you also get Wi-Fi b/g and then there is HSDPA for your data on the move.

The standard Android browser has been adapted slightly, so you get multi-touch zooming and we found the browser to be quick to load pages and smooth in scrolling around large pages. Internet video is handled by the on-board YouTube app (for YouTube content), but there is no Flash player. Again, you could try the Skyfire browser for your internet video, but an update to Android 2.2 is likely to be the more comprehensive solution.

The internet experience on the Streak is good, serving pages quickly and providing plenty of space for browsing images especially. It doesn't have the size that the iPad does, which is even more expansive, but that extra inch on the screen makes a noticeable difference from your normal smartphone experience. This is all helped by the great colour depth that the screen offers.

Some may even be tempted to use it as an ebook reader, and although there is no included provisioning for this, the Kindle or Aldiko apps are waiting in the store for you. We fired up Kindle for Android and found that there was enough space to be effective, although you will be flicking through the pages rather more frequently than most ebook readers.

The Dell Streak comes with an embedded GPS and here the 5-inch screen size is of great benefit, allowing you to turn it into your satnav. The screen size is more common for navigation devices, and a quick update of Google Maps offered up the Navigation arm of that application, so you do have free navigation here. We've said it before, Google Maps Navigation is a little primitive, but will do in a pinch. Talking of pinches, there is no pinch zooming in Google Maps on the Streak.

You'll have to ensure you have your power supply handy for the Streak if you are going to use it as a PND. The bespoke connection chosen by Dell means that you'll need a USB connection in your car to use the supplied lead, but they are available in 12V "cigarette lighter" form these days.

The battery on the Streak isn't outstanding. We found it would last through most of the day, but it needs charging every night whilst in regular use. Like all these devices, power saving measures can be taken, but with the size that the Streak is, it would have been nice to see leading battery performance.

Finally we come to the camera. Dell has customised the camera interface and it certainly is a great experience composing your shot on such a large screen. The interface offers up settings around the edges of the screen and everything is easy to get to. You can toggle the "flash" although we found it to be typically ineffective.

The arrangement of having these side menus offered up when you touch the screen means there is no touch to focus option, so you get a central focusing reticule. The results in good light are nice, perhaps a touch under-exposed with colour balance a little off, but easily corrected. In lower light noise rushes in as you'd expect.?

Video, as we mentioned previously, is limited to a rather lacklustre 640 x 480 pixels, and we found it to be at varying frame rates, all a little on the low side. For a device of this ilk, this seems a little limiting, especially as we know that HD video capture on these specs is possible.

Verdict:

We'd pick the Dell Streak over the Archos 5 if we were convinced that a tablet of this size was what we wanted. But it's difficult to ignore the fact that the Streak sits awkwardly above smartphone dimensions, without really establishing a position for itself.

It doesn't deliver the all-round entertainment out of the box that it should. Make the video offering stronger and people would see it as a great travel companion. It comes with a 16GB microSD card in the box which is welcomed, but provision of native support for a wider range of video codecs and home network love, perhaps a stereo speaker arrangement, and things would be more convincing.?

Overall we like the Dell Streak. We like the look, we like the feel, we have enjoyed using the device at this size for cruising the Internet and watching video content. We even appreciate some of the tinkering that Dell has done with the interface. But for pure consumers, we feel it needs a little more for greatness, so you need to do a little less tinkering yourself.

It's a first device and it's clear to us where Dell should go with it: an update to Android v2.2 and a few more software features added, and the Streak will earn its place in your bag.?

Tags: Phones Mobile phones Tablets Dell Dell Streak Android

Dell Streak originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 22 Jul 2010 15:19:04 +0100

Looking for a premium iPod dock?

iPod docks come in all shapes and sizes, most arriving around the ?100-150 mark, offering a range of features the most useful of which is the ability to get the tunes off your iPod or iPhone and into your room. Many suffer from the same problem too - sound quality. There are a few exceptions, of course, the B&W Zeppelin being one of them, attacking the "premium" iPod dock with the design and audio quality to justify its price.

The Philips Fidelio DS9000 comes in making big claims. It claims to be an audiophile iPod dock. The audiophile community might argue this point, making noises about separate component systems, reference grade headphone amplifiers and so on. But what Philips has created, like the Zeppelin, is a device that is as pleasing to your eye as it is to your ear.

As such we'll forgive the fact that it has no additional features to speak of. We'd normally ask where the radio is, or where the network music player is, but if you are spending a penny under ?400 on an iPod dock, combining features in this way is perhaps an unnecessary measure. You are investing in an audio device that is an exorbitant luxury and having lived with one for a couple of weeks, we can forgive the fact that it isn't a jack of all trades.

Philips tells us that the DS9000 is created using a veneer lamination process, so the cabinet is constructed from layered wood and bent into the beautiful curved design. The choice of materials is designed to reduce unwanted vibrations and it's refreshing to find the thing isn't just a hunk of plastic like so many are. Also addressing vibrations is a large rubber foot, so it sits securely on whatever surface you place it on.

The front of the DS9000 is mesh, with a central tube plated in chrome, which spills out the back to encase the twin bass ports. The Fidelio S9000 looks good from all angles, it's almost a shame that you have to connect it to the power on the back, where you'll also find a 3.5mm aux in for your non-Apple devices.

Adding a teaspoon of cool to the die-for looks is a proximity sensor, so as your hand approaches the dock the central volume control bar illuminates. It's a nice touch, but highlights the fact that volume controls are all you get. That doesn't really matter however, because if you are at the dock, you can use the regular controls on your docked device.

The dock connector on the DS9000 has a degree of movement to cater for different models, cases and so on, with a discrete rubber backstop to stop it resting on the front mesh. Docking can take a bit of a wiggle to get it to line up, but once in place, your iPhone is neatly sitting front and centre.

Controls then fall to the included remote control. This is larger than your average iPod dock model, but doesn't quite reflect the quality of the rest of the system. A single piece chromed back would have really reflected the classy design of the speaker unit. However, the controls work well enough in navigating your device and getting to all your music.

Connect your iPod or iPhone and you'll be prompted that there is a compatible application. You don't need this, but download the Philips application and you'll get access to some of the Fidelio's settings: adjusting the sound setting presets, toggling the dynamic bass. You also get a clock display if you want one, with alarms.

??

There is a catch however. If you choose to use Philips' app when playing your tunes, the remote doesn't give you full menu access any more, so you'll find yourself stuck and unable to navigate all your music. With this in mind, we found ourselves choosing not to use their app.

The remote can also be a little slow to get through large collections of music as scrolling seemed to be a little too slow for our liking.

So what of that audiophile tag? Well the Philips Fidelio DS9000 certainly delivers when it comes to sound quality. With the dynamic bass engaged, it accurately delivers bass, giving real punch to music. Of course, you might want to turn this off if classical is on the agenda.

That rich warm bass provides a fantastic backdrop to your music, which is delivered with clarity and detail, the S9000 picking out those small details that lesser systems obscure: that lingering bass note or that background percussion that adds a little sparkle to your track.

The DS9000 features two 1-inch tweeters and two 4-inch inverted dome woofers, delivering 2x 50W RMS. Of course this isn't a small dock, coming in at 562 x 214 x 216mm. If you are thinking of a dock like the DS9000, you need space: this isn't one to add to a cluttered bedroom.

Verdict:

When the Philips Fidelio DS9000 was announced we were excited by the proposal and having lived with it, that excitement is justified. The S9000 delivers both in the looks and sound department and justifies the high price: this is iPod docking par excellence.

If your music collection resides on your iPod and you want excellent room-filling delivery of that music, then the Philips Fidelio DS9000 is a great choice for those who have a little spare cash.

Whether true audiophiles will be happy is another question.

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Tags: Audio iPod speakers iPod docks Philips Philips Fidelio S9000

Philips Fidelio DS9000 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 21 Jul 2010 14:27:37 +0100

The LX3 reborn

Meet the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 - the very pinnacle of the company’s compact camera range. The first thing you’ll notice when you pick it up is that it’s also nigh on the smallest Panasonic makes as well. With the same squared off Soviet looks that make it both appealing on the eye and the pocket as well.

As with the rest of these high powered mini-machines, the LX5 is also surprisingly easy and non-fiddly to use - certainly for the most part, anyway. If you didn’t know any better, it’d look very much like a mid- to low-range snapper. It has a fairly standard five-button navigation array, quick menu control and playback mode with the only clues to something greater are the AF/AE lock, the jog wheel for your thumb and the dedicated video record on the top.

The insides are where this compact holds the aces though. The CCD sensor has been redesigned yet again from the improvements made on the LX3 and the decent 1/1.63-inch size unit offers a wider dynamic range, increased sensitivity and better colour saturation. Panasonic claims an increase of numbers around 30-40 per cent and, although it’s impossible for the user to quantify the facts, we were certainly pleased with the depth of colour and even exposure offered across our pictures. Low light performance, we’ll have to save for the full review.

The Leica optics don’t disappoint either. There’s the same F/2.0, 24mm Summicron lens as on the LX3, but they’ve managed to eke out the zoom in this compact to 3.8x, 90mm equivalent. It was a little frustratingly short after having had our hands on the Panasonic FZ100, but if you want more telephoto prowess, you’d best plump for another model.

What you get instead, though, is the promise with this wide aperture of all the fun of narrow depth of field photography. In practice, it takes a fair bit of menu delving to set it up and the jog wheel is a touch tight too the thumb to really come into its own here - the way the focus ring works on the Canon PowerShot S90 - but there are all sorts of other ways to get into the menus instead.

What the LX5 does have on the lens barrel is the aspect ratio selector, as appeared on the previous model, and one can’t help wondering why Panasonic has bothered using such a good area for a function that not only just serves to reduce your effective sensor size, but can also be very easily achieved with cropping after the fact anyway.

The line of the LX5 isn’t broken by a flash because the little devil is concealed in the body and, refreshingly, pops-up on your command rather than when the camera thinks it fit. There is a hot shoe for an external light source but it should offer reasonable results without, given that the camera ISO goes up to 3200 before pixel mixing kicks in - up through ISO 6400 and ISO 12800 where the options max out. Realistically, we found you can certainly be shooting at ISO 800 without bumping into any noise issues. Combine that with the wide lens aperture and you’ll find you don’t need that flash as often as you might think. ?

There’s no burst shooting button on the chassis that you get with the FZ100 but that doesn’t mean you can’t get any shutter action out of the LX5. It shoots 2.5fps at full resolution but, slightly disappointingly, only for 5 frames. If what you’re trying to record is fairly predictable then you’ll be able to catch it clearly enough with the LX5, but otherwise it’s not really what it’s designed for. Naturally, you can sacrifice the detail for speed but, again, the bottom line is to opt for another camera if action shots are what you’re after.

Where it is quick is in the focus and shutter response. The LX5 uses Panasonic’s sonic speed AF technology which in practice means that you barely notice the thing having to work at all when it zeroes in. In fact, it gets to the point when you’re not sure if it’s actually performed the task as you scan about with the camera. A good bit of scrutinising of the very crisp 460k dot, 3-inch LED backed screen confirms it’s all happened - even if the depth of the colour shown doesn’t quite match what you see on your computer - before you get the almost instantaneous joy that is the 0.007 second shutter lag when you decide it’s time to snap. It comes across as if using an SLR for responsiveness - only without the pleasure of the mirror flick.

Once you chuck in 720p video recording and the fact that the whole thing is just 271g, it makes for a rather nice package.

Verdict:

While it’s hard to argue that the Panasonic LX5 doesn’t have everything you could ask for in a high-end compact camera, it does rather feel that you’re kept at arms length from it. It’s an obvious machine to use for point and press activity and there’s certainly enough automatic options to keep your shots properly exposed but, at the same time, there didn’t seem a lot to enjoy about it for DLSR or higher knowledge users looking for a kick around camera to keep on them at all times. Most of the manual fun was just too far from your fingertips to make that possible.

All the same, we certainly wouldn’t say that this isn’t a good machine. It works well. It takes great pictures, but somehow it just isn’t a whole lot of fun. People choosing it as a step up aren’t going to learn a lot from it and enthusiasts might rather play with something else. If you want a top notch point and press though, this might be what you’re after.

Tags: Cameras Compact cameras Digital cameras Panasonic Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 10 megapixels

Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX5 - First Look originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 21 Jul 2010 06:00:00 +0100

Desktop replacement, Apple style

So, you know you want a computer with a big screen but you want to be able to move it around reasonably easily. So a desktop machine like the iMac 27-inch screen computer is right out.

Well, there are plenty of Windows PCs on the market, but the most stylish laptop is still the MacBook Pro which, of course, comes loaded with Mac OSX 10.6.4 Snow Leopard. If you're a Windows die-hard but want a better-looking laptop, you can splash out on the MacBook Pro and install Windows, since all Macs with Intel chips can run both systems. This is handy if you have some key programs which aren't available for Macs.

We've looked at the latest 15-inch MacBook Pro – this week we'll tackle its bigger brother. As handsome and well-built as you'd expect, the screen and base perfectly weighted so the bottom stays put when you lift the lid. The 17-incher weighs 2.99kg, so is on the edge of portability.

The keyboard is outstandingly good: comfortable, well-spaced and enjoyable to use. It is backlit so you can see it easily even in low light, which is useful as the lettering is white on black keys. There's the now-standard large, glass trackpad with multi-touch so it reacts differently according to whether you touch it with one, two, three or four fingers. Perhaps the next iteration will have a five-finger option, too.

The screen is great: glossy, with high 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution though you can opt for a matte screen instead if you want, but you'll pay extra for this. It's so big that you notice it not just because it takes up so much of your vision, but because dragging something from one edge to the other is a bigger movement.

Strangely, the 17-incher lacks the SD memory card reader of the smaller 15-inch and even 13-inch models. This is a shame as it's a handy addition and if the littler ones have space…?

Like the other MacBook Pros, this model has a built-in instead of a removable battery. A pain if you're on the road for too long and it runs out of juice just when you can't get to the mains. Still, it's a big battery so it'll give you most of a day easily. And of course, to be extra sure, you could also carry a HyperMac - the Mac laptop battery which gives peace of mind, looks good, and will even charge your USB gadgets, too.

Speaking of which, the three USB sockets are neatly in a line, as on the 15-incher, which can be a little too snugly placed if you have big thick USB attachments like 3G modems and some USB sticks. And none of the three is the useful recharge-my-gadget-while-the-computer's-off sort. Apple is sometimes late with these kind of enhancements, but can we have one next time, please?

Like its smaller-screened brother, this MacBook Pro has a speedy 2.53GHz Intel i5 processor and it shows, along with 4GB of RAM. It launches programs much faster than last year's model, and every bit of processing feels noticeably faster, which is highly enjoyable.

It also has the Nvidia GeForce GT 330M which takes care of the demanding graphics, whilst the in-built Intel HD graphics take care of lesser tasks. This uses Apple's auto-switching feature, so you aren't draining the battery running the graphics card when you don't need it.

Verdict:

This is a tremendous piece of kit. Of course it's not cheap as Apple stuff rarely is, but your money buys you handsome, super-efficient and enjoyable computing. It's a real pleasure to type on the keyboard, the screen looks magnificent and it's fast, fast, fast. What more could you want?

Tags: Hardware Laptops Apple Macbook Pro

Apple MacBook Pro 17-inch i5 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 13:37:57 +0100

Should you flip out?

Boiling it down, there are only a handful of form factors for the mobile phone. The full on touchscreen slab, the slide-out QWERTY keyboard, the candy bar (QWERTY or not), and the clamshell.

The Motorola Flipout is none of the above. You see the Flipout is a dinky square handset (67 x 67 x 17mm) with a very responsive touchscreen display on top, and a QWERTY keyboard that swivels (or as Motorola says "rotates") out from a central pivot in the top left-hand corner giving the phone its name.?

That swivel action (which is incredibly addictive for those always looking for something to play with in their pocket) is also the way to answer calls.

The idea is that most of the time you don't have to open the handset at all, but merely interact with its features via the 2.8-inch, 320 x 240 pixel resolution, display. But when you need to do some typing you can swivel out the keyboard and bash your thoughts down, without having to struggle with a fiddly on-screen keyboard, on what, it has to be said, is a screen smaller than most of its rivals.?That display is responsive, easy to use, and although small, still big enough to punch numbers in or surf the Internet.?

Aimed at the mid- to low-end of the smartphone pile, plastic is the key ingredient in the Flipout's casing although this does allow for a range of colours, from Fairway Green, Saffron and Raspberry Crush, as well as Liquorice, Brilliant Blue, Poppy Red, and White - and yes, they will be interchangeable.?It goes with the snappy, zippy appeal and no doubt will be loved by the phone's audience - the hip 20-something that the Microsoft Kin tried to get and failed.

The back of the handset gives you a 3-megapixel camera, without flash, but with digital zoom, while the sides offer little other than volume, power and screen lock - with Motorola opting to put all of the controls on the keyboard.

That QWERTY keyboard is easy to use?giving you everything you need when it comes to data input. The keys themselves are, spongy to touch and, although incredibly close when it comes to typing, good enough to bash out a quick email or type in a web address. This is helped by the keys being rounded rather than flat and that in turn gives you just enough space between them.

Punching in a phone number can be done either via the top line of numbers or via the on screen keypad (in phone mode), either way is simple.?

In the bottom left-hand corner of the keyboard is a D-pad for navigating around menus and the like. While it looks as though it could be optical, it's not. Frustratingly, rather than annoyingly, it isn't really needed. After all, the screen is fully touch responsive and Android is easy enough to navigate without yet another option with which to do so. It would have been nice to see the real estate given to something else.

Tech specs wise you'll get 802.11 b/g/n Wi-FI, Bluetooth, a 3.5mm headphones jack, GPS and 3G. There is also an accelerometer, swappable 2GB microSD card pre-installed, as well as ambient light and proximity sensors.?

The battery should last you around 4.5 hours of talk time, and you will be able to get through the day without the panic of having to find a charging station.?Of course, if you hit Twitter, Facebook, the web, and everything else hard that may not be the case.

Call quality was good, although many people we phoned complained that we sounded like a robot. Based on further calls we made, we suspect this is down to the Flipout doing some heavy noise cancellation. Our test call on London's Oxford Street was so successful that the person on the other end could only hear us, and not the mass of noise going on around us. Likewise, conversations on the train proved that people could hear us, but the payoff is that you might not sound like you.

But hardware is only ever half the story. What about software? In steps Android 2.1 with a Motoblur skin and feature set. So although it's not the latest Android operating system (2.2 is available for the Nexus One, but that's it) it's is still pretty up to date. For American readers, the software, incidentally, is the same as the also newly announced Motorola Charm.

As with other variants of the Motoblur Android interface from Motorola, you are presented with five customisable pages that you can thumb between. Each of these pages can be populated with widgets, folders, shortcuts, applications or contacts and so on. The widget selection is good too, covering most bases.

But the big focus with Motoblur is that it allows you to quickly manage your social networking life via a central hub. This allows the sorting of information, whether its from Twitter, Picasa, LastFM or MySpace, into the phone so you can access it quickly and easily without having to micro-manage every service thereafter. It also does a good job integrating it too, so you have one uber contacts list and one all powerful update stream.

That said, update stream is what Happenings essentially is. It will sit as a widget on the home page and pump updates at you.?Sounds great, and for light social networkers it is. For Facebook updates it works well, giving you the chance to see things happen and respond, without opening up a separate Facebook app.

It's a nice idea and it seems to work well enough, but it isn't without its problems. Occasionally we found the blur too literal: when Happenings just didn't update.?Heavy Twitter users might also find that having 500+ Happenings a day is a little too much to handle.

Fortunately you can filter the Happenings application (rather than the widget) to display only one of your streams, so you can then scroll through Twitter in a more traditional format.?Of course, this being an Android handset, you could opt out of the Twitter integration and install Twitter's official app.?As with the iPhone's App Store, new apps are always appearing and there is plenty of choice to make your handset do what you want it to.

Happenings aside, Motoblur gives you a great Contacts book. Taking your existing Google Contacts, adding in Facebook pictures (or Twitter pics) and mashing all that information together is impressive, and for the social butterfly a great feature that happily matches HTC's contact integration system.

Beyond contacts, the phone does multimedia as well.?In steps that 3-megapixel camera, which to be honest isn't that great. The pictures we took, both inside and out, were pretty ropey, while the video, which has three quality settings (the maximum resolution is 352 x 288) isn't that much better. Let's just say the camera is one of the phone's weaker points.

Elsewhere on the media front you get Media Share, an app that lets you turn your Motorola Flipout into a media streamer for your network. It's easy to operate and if your TV or hi-fi system is capable, lets you bring the music to the party.

Last but not least, Moto Phone Portal is also worth a mention as it enables you to access and manage your phone’s data from any browser through a USB or Wi-Fi connection on your PC or Mac. That means editing content and viewing phone information while at home or on-the-go.

This, combined with the media share feature, means that even if you haven't got the right cable you can still use the phone to share content be it a video, picture, or a presentation.?

But it's not all about apps, as one of the core elements of any smartphone is the browser. Here you get Android's stock browser offering, with multi-touch allowing you to zoom in and out of pages with ease. It's a good job too as you won't see much of any page at any given time.?Thankfully scrolling is responsive. ?

Verdict:

We are pleasantly surprised by the Motorola Flipout in that although it has its faults, on the whole it's actually a nice little handset.

The phone was zippy; as this isn't going to be a handset that you will push to the limit as you might with a Samsung Galaxy S or HTC Desire.?The keyboard is easy to use, while the swivel movement addictive enough to play with in your pocket.

The Motoblur implementation, if managed by you correctly, will connect your life and there are some nice touches like the portal hub feature.?On the downside the call quality wasn't that great, and the camera is pretty out-dated.

If you are looking to upgrade from your Nokia or Sony Ericsson, and hoping to get into the world of smartphones without going the full touchscreen or high-end handset way, this is one to consider.

We like.

Tags: Phones Mobile phones Motorola Motorola flipout Android Android 2.1

Motorola Flipout originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 19 Jul 2010 11:41:25 +0100

Looking for monitor with a TV tuner?

The SyncMaster LD220HD, like the LG W2230s, is sold as an accompaniment to your laptop, rather than as a desktop monitor, although in truth it could easily be both.

Measuring 22 inches across the diagonal, the LD220 doesn’t have a conventional stand, instead offering a kickstand at the back to support the screen. One thing that is a little strange about the stand is that it has small rollers on the bottom and it is sprung, so you can push the monitor to a new angle, but it springs back to one position when you let go.

The design is simple. A glossy black bezel surrounds the matte screen, with two small plastic feet at the front to keep it secure and stop it scratching whatever surface you place it on.

Apart from the subtle markings and the Samsung logo, the front of the monitor appears to be free from controls, but there is a touch panel running along the bottom right-hand corner of the monitor. This firstly offers the touch power button, but also offers your input selectors, menu, volume and channel selectors. A combination of which allows for menu control at the screen itself, although a remote control is also supplied.

Around the back the LD220HD reveals its hand, offering up a selection of connections. You get the HDMI and DVI which most modern monitors support, although there is no VGA/D-Sub (a supplied cable offers a VGA to DVI connection). There is also a Scart and Component in, which are a little more unusual for a monitor, as well as an antenna connector. Audio connections will let you feed audio in through a 3.5mm cable (supplied) if your source cannot pass the audio signal over the HDMI cable. A common interface slot lies on the side.

By now it is obvious that the LD220HD has a tuner onboard as well, given away by the channel changing options and the ant in around the back. Plug in you’re your aerial and you'll find it has both analogue and Freeview tuners built-in.

We connected it up to our regular roof aerial and it had no problems offering a full platter of Freeview channels, although there is no exterior marking on either the screen or the box to indicate to buyers that a tuner is included, save for the HDTVmonitor label in the top right corner.

As a multi-function device, its strengths lie towards the monitor performance, as we found the TV picture quality to be surprisingly blocky given the size of the screen, so buy this monitor because you want the full range of functions, not just because you are after a small TV. The menus and EPG, however, owe a lot to Samsung's regular home cinema range and if you've used any of their devices in recent years, you'll find your way around without too many problems.

The touch controls offer some degree of menu access although this is somewhat fiddly, however the remote offers full control and is well laid out. It also offers auto adjustment and we found that once hooked up as a second screen, a poke of the right menu button aligned the screen with no problems.

As far as performance goes, as a general monitor the LD220HD offers good all-round performance without any glaring gripes. There are a range of settings you can tweak, but given the Full HD feed from an attached computer gave great results.

There is a matte anti-reflection finish to the monitor which means that it isn't as sharp as some glossy rivals, however the benefit is that it doesn't suffer nearly as much when used around windows or glaring overhead lights.?

Speakers are mounted in the top rear of the display and whilst there is plenty of volume, it is never very natural. You'll be much better off combining it with a set of desktop speakers for better audio performance. A 3.5mm jack is available for your headphones, you could equally use it to feed audio into an Aux In on your speakers to get audio from the TV tuner.

Verdict:

The Samsung SyncMaster LD220HD should be seen as a jack of all trades. It offers up the range of connectivity to suit pretty much anything you'd want of it and the TV tuner is a real benefit, letting you make the most of the space available. As such, it would be particularly suited to students or anyone living in a small space.

The only issue worth noting is that stand. The kickstand design means it is only really suited to sitting on a desk, set at a comfortable angle for viewing when seated at that desk. This makes it slightly less flexible for those who might want to lie in bed and watch it, for example, where the viewing angle they'll achieve might not be the optimum.

As we said, see it as a monitor first, put it in its place on a desk and it will provide you with a diverse range of features.?

Tags: Hardware Monitors Samsung Samsung SyncMaster LD220HD LCD televisions

Samsung SyncMaster LD220HD originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 16 Jul 2010 16:23:08 +0100

A movie spin-off worth playing?

It's a shame that some of the best family films of all time have inspired some of the worst family games, and up 'til now that's been the case with the games of Pixar's films. Even the best have been mediocre, generic platformers, while the worst ... well, the general idea seems to have been watch the movie, string together a few action sequences based vaguely on key moments, and hope that nobody notices the second-rate gameplay and short running time.

Maybe we're being cruel. Maybe there are exceptions that we don't remember. Yet of all the Pixar movie-inspired games we've played only one sticks in the mind as being any good, and that's last year's Toy Story Mania; a Wii light-gun game with decent replay value.

From the off, it's apparent that Toy Story 3: The Video Game is a very different kettle of fish. It looks good, it's fun to play, and it's packed with genuinely interesting ideas. It seems to have been designed and developed by people who actually cared what they were doing, and were given the time and resources to produce a brilliant game, with a little help from Pixar too. If that's the case, it's worked. Toy Story 3 is the best game based on a family film for several years.

It's also a game of two halves. On the one hand, Toy Story 3 takes you through the story of the new movie, kicking off with the film's barnstorming opening Western sequence, and carrying on through, throwing in additional sequences based on old Buzz Lightyear video games or the playtime hi-jinx of little kids wherever these make sense. There's some solid platforming, some brilliant blasting, and a few cool stunt-racing challenges to pull off, and these levels are absolutely stuffed with collectibles, giving kids (and obsessive gamers) the replay value that they crave.

And for once, these levels aren't dull, repetitive or painfully generic. Sure, there are some low-points, with an extended spree through Emperor Zerg's secret base going on a bit too long, and there are some points at which the game's fixed camera angle makes progress infuriating (though sensible checkpoints and infinite lives help a lot). Overall, though, it's the high points that you remember, like a superb sequence that begins in a child's bedroom with a rising sea of coffee and a menacing witch, and ends up in space with rails to grind, planetoids and rocket ships in need of repair.

At times it's Super Mario Galaxy-esque, but, to be honest, we mean that as a complement. You'll play different sections as Woody, Buzz or cowgirl Jessie, and each has their own abilities to bring to the table, which the game exploits with a certain ingenuity. For once, it's not a platform-by-numbers affair.

Now, however, we come to the really good bit. After you've cracked the opening level, Toy Story 3 opens up the Toy Box mode. This takes Woody to a Western-themed open-world locale, centred on a town populated by blocky figures, Toy Story aliens and his posse of pals. Wander around and different characters will give you missions, some to do with collecting five of this or ten of that, and some to do with rounding up outlaws or finding a missing character.

A little more play adds further tools, like a pick-axe you can use to mine gold or a camera you can use to take photos, and these in turn open up further options. For instance, there are photo challenges where you have to recreate a specific shot, with the right location, characters, outfits and poses, or frantic checkpoint races to be won.

The more you explore, the more areas open up, and the more missions and challenges you'll unlock. Best of all, everything is customisable. Earn gold by completing missions or mining and you can spend it to buy in new stores or civic buildings for the town, in turn opening up new features, areas and opportunities. Other toy characters can be purchased, and the ones you have already can be customised, with tailors and barber shops that allow you to change haircuts and add costumes. The buildings themselves can be painted and customised, and generally there are dozens of ways to make this Toy Box your own. Adult gamers will like it, while younger ones will love it, and that makes Toy Story 3 a family game of unusual depth.

Finally, kudos to the team for doing such a great job of replicating the look and the banter of the film. Of course, you can't expect a console game to fully replicate what Pixar's render farms can do, but Toy Story 3 gets close enough, and in some areas it's actually spectacular. Voice work, too, is top notch, with the majority of the stars from the film onboard, and decent alternatives where that's not the case. Once again there's an impression that this was a game built with real love for the movies, and to show what a good video game can do.

Verdict:

Toy Story 3 should be held up as a shining example of how to do a family game right. While it has its flaws in the camera and controls department, the story mode leaves the pitiful platforming of most rival licensed games for dead, and the Toy Box mode is guaranteed to keep the kids busy in the long run. In fact, it's so much fun that the biggest danger is you'll buy it for the kids, then hog the controller for yourself! ?

?

Tags: Gaming PS3 Pixar Toy Story 3 Disney Interactive

Toy Story 3: The Video Game - PS3 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:06:55 +0100

Is the world's strongest super zoom also the mightiest?

Though it offers what its manufacturer claims to be "the world's strongest" zoom on a bridge camera - at a 35mm equivalent 28-840mm, or 30x optical zoom - it is the 14 effective megapixel SP-800UZ's overall size, or comparative lack of it, that impresses.

With dimensions of 107.3 x 73.4 x 84.7mm the SP-800UZ (or "Ultra Zoom") won't fit in your jeans but is noticeably smaller than competitors' high zoom models that can't match such a lens range. At 416g in weight with battery and card inserted it makes the Fujifilm FinePix HS10 - which comes closest with its own 24-720mm equivalent focal range - appear unwieldy and tank-like by comparison.

The SP-800UZ is also ?100 less than that camera, and as with the Olympus Pen range, is available in black or silver livery, the titanium finish to the latter and rounded edges going some way to disguising the oddly boxy shape which lacks the charm of its manufacturer's retro Micro Four Thirds system cameras, though seems to be coming from the same place. In this way it looks a lot less deliberately like a baby DSLR than its rivals.

In terms of handling, in lacking the DSLR-like range of buttons and dials more typically found on bridge cameras - there's no bottle top-style shooting mode wheel for example - the SP-800UZ literally feels like it has had its functionality paired back to the essentials. The included basics comprise a springy shutter release button encircled by a rocker switch for operating the zoom, a recessed on/off button just behind, a manually raised integral flash sitting just above the zoom barrel and, on the backplate, a scroll dial/wheel with central OK button for variously navigating and selecting functional changes. Playback, menu and, more unusually "in-camera manual" also get their own buttons above and below the scroll dial, which are so slender as to require fingernail operation.?

The built-in help guide, denoted by the quizzical "?" symbol gives very brief textual explanations of key shooting functions and features and then asks whether the user would like to jump to that feature to try it out. All very useful for beginners who, like most of us, don't bother reading the hard copy or, even less likely, the CD ROM version.

Handily Olympus has seen fit to improve operability by including a record button for shooting video clips, located top right of the camera back so it falls under the thumb as you snake three fingers around the moulded grip at the front. Naturally the supplied lithium ion rechargeable battery and a vacant slot for optional SD/SDHC card are housed in the grip's base. For once, you don't necessarily need to make such a card purchase at the same time as the camera itself, as the Olympus comes with a whopping (for a digital camera at least) 2GB of internal memory.

The Olympus' grip is narrow and less comfortable than Samsung's 24x zoom WB5000 or Fujifilm's HS10, and, even so, there's only just enough room for your fingers to squeeze between it and the adjacent lens barrel. However with one hand on the grip and the other cupping the lens it's possible to hold the camera nice and steady in the palm for shooting handheld - even at maximum telephoto.

Images are composed via the camera's LCD screen in the absence of the alternative of an optical or electronic viewfinder - a compromise made in return for a slightly smaller form factor than its rivals. The wider format 16:9 ratio LCD screen is cropped at the left and right leaving black bands to more closely reflect what regular 4:3 ratio stills will look like once downloaded to your desktop PC.?

The large internal memory and the lack of a plethora of potentially mystifying controls or command dials, does however ensure the SP-800UZ is less daunting for anyone trading up from a point-and-shoot compact - surely the SP-800UZ's ideal user. Getting started is as simple as pressing the on/off button, the camera powering up in 2 seconds, followed by menu - which brings up an easily navigated toolbar down the right hand side of the screen - and away you go.

The zoom takes 3 seconds to travel the entirety of its range, sound-tracked by a low operational buzz. Criminally though, the optical zoom is disabled when recording video if you - quite reasonably - want to record sound at the same time, and after pressing the red record button there's a brief pause before filming kicks in. This is a real shame and seems to waste the camera's potential for amateur videographers; unless you delve into the camera's menus and deactivate sound recording the lens merely stays put where it was left when recording commenced. You do get HDMI output though, the port hidden under a flap at the side of the camera offering a separate AV/USB out port.

More positively, in terms of stills shooting, the options here are scene/subject recognising iAuto (or "intelligent auto") mode, along with Program, a dedicated Beauty mode for which Olympus seems to have taken inspiration from the Samsung range, plus scene modes, Magic Filters (on-board digital effects), plus an auto stitching panorama option that comes across as a lot more primitive than the Sweep Panorama style options offered by the Fujifilm HS10, the latest generation Sony compacts and NEX-5.

The Magic Filters meanwhile are basically the Art Filters otherwise found on its more sophisticated (but less optically powerful) Micro Four Thirds cameras. So here we again get the most attractive options of separate Pop Art, pin hole camera and fish eye lens effects, joined by the slightly less successful "drawing" which traces a thin black outline around prominent subjects in the frame and whites out everything else to give the illusion of a pencil sketch.

Slightly convoluted, however, is the fact that the user has to tab to the bottom of the toolbar presented on-screen and press the OK button to enter the further settings menu, which is where the more expansive options are secreted away. These include the ability to activate Olympus' exposure enhancing Shadow Adjustment technology, or leave it on the default of "auto". Unlike most big zoom competitors there's not the option to shoot in RAW mode as an alternative to JPEG. But as Olympus seems to be primarily aiming at those point and shooters wanting a broader focal range with the SP-800UZ, perhaps that isn't too big a deal.?

Maximum resolution JPEGs are committed to memory in 3 to 4 seconds, which, whilst not particularly fast, is a speed we can live with. Exposures are even, which suggests the Shadow Adjustment feature is doing its job, and colours as a default err on the side of realism. Images are reasonably sharp, but overall were a little softer than we expected from the brand.

Verdict:

If you want a huge zoom in a relatively small and portable package, the class-leading focal range provided by the Olympus SP-800UZ is worth seeking out.

However, we could have done with a few more dedicated buttons in order to find certain functions quicker, and unlike competitors there's no EVF to fall back on as an alternative to the admittedly clear LCD. The fact that operation of the lens is disabled when shooting video with sound however is, for us, a bit of a shocker. For this reason it loses a point from our review.

?

Tags: Cameras Digital cameras Compact cameras Olympus Olympus SP-800UZ

Olympus SP-800UZ originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Thu, 15 Jul 2010 09:00:00 +0100

Can this be the radio for your summer?

With the digital switch over for radio now planned for 2015, you haven't got long to get into the world of digital radio. Well that's the scaremongering out of the way, but seriously can the Pure Oasis Flow offer you decent sound and performance??

Sold as a rugged radio, the Oasis Flow is a solid, rather large (155 x 230 x 140mm) connected radio that is encased in plastic and metal and offers DAB, internet, and FM radio stations for you to enjoy.?We say rugged, but this isn't Olympus Tough camera or Panasonic laptop rugged. It's not covered in rubber and ready to be hurled into the back of a Land Rover and given a good beating.?

It is rugged enough to withstand being used on your patio, around your pool (read paddling if you are in the UK) and generally out and about on a camping trip or to a picnic.?That's partly thanks to a built-in rechargeable battery that gives you freedom from the power socket. Powered by the company's ChargePak tech you'll have to recharge it via the provided cable at some point, but it will save you a fortune in new batteries.

Coming in gloss white with aluminium edges, the main focus is towards the front of the unit. Here you are presented with the speaker, three control knobs for volume, power and scrolling through menus, and finally a large high-contrast yellow-on-black graphical 128 x 64 pixel OLED screen that is also touch sensitive, but only in part.

Before we talk about interaction, it's worth pointing out that around the side there are headphone, Aux in, USB and power sockets, while the back of the device reveals a storage slot for the plug-in aerial and two smaller speakers for the bass.

The top features a socket for the aerial that can be taken off when you don't need it (you don't, for example, if you are listening to internet radio), and a handily placed handle for carrying the device around, although at 2.2kg you'll need to make sure you're tough enough yourself.

That weight does help though. It gives the Pure Oasis Flow a solid feel and one that continues the tradition of Pure's excellent build quality.

At the front of the unit, the main focus is going to be around the controls, as there is no remote in the box it's the only way to control the unit.?As with previous Pure radios there is a strange mix between touch and turn dials, which can at times get confusing.?In an attempt to reduce the number of buttons, some of the commands for the Pure Oasis Flow have become contextual touch sensitive at the bottom of that OLED screen.

That means things like adding the station you are listening to the Favourites list or pressing Options to access things like the Display, Wi-Fi settings, or Alarm or timer. There is also a back button that lets you get back to where you were, unsurprisingly enough.

But this is where it gets slightly confusing, turn the Select knob and that throws up a different menu selection specific to the radio option you've opted to listen to. Be it internet radio, DAB, FM or Aux in. It's not the end of the world, but it will take a little while getting used to.

Turn on the radio, and the DAB will start its tuning process to grab as many DAB stations as possible. If you're in a good DAB area that means you'll get lots. If you aren't then why are you buying a DAB radio? Of course if you thought you were and then found out you weren’t you always have the FM radio, internet radio service called the "Lounge", or a network music to enjoy as well.

DAB stations came through loud and clear in our tests, working just as you would expect a DAB digital radio to work. Pure has been in this business for some time, leading it in fact, and one thing is for sure, it knows its stuff.?The FM radio is equally easy to use and equally good on the performance front.

When it comes to internet radio, it does take a little longer to set-up, only because you've got to go through the boring process of punching in a password for your network (all via a on screen keyboard and that scrolling knob) but once you've set-up you can then access thousands of stations available, either by scrolling through them or via the search function.

Thanks to that 802.11b/g wireless connectivity, you can also use the flow to stream from a networked PC or Mac either from software?you might already have?(it has to be a UPnP server or PC/MAC running UPnP server software), or via the company's Flowserver software licensed from Twonky Media (As an aside we tried it with our Sonos system and while it could see the tracks it refused to play them).

Software isn't one of Pure's strong points. Pure might make great hardware, but we've said this before and we'll say it again, the whole device is let down massively when it comes to its website.

To get the media server features working you have to register with the company's website, then register the radio, then input a code into the radio having received that via email, then you get a second registration code via another email that you then have to punch into the Twonky Media software you've downloaded. Failure to do any of this in the right order leaves you having to phone technical support (like we had to).

It's not that the software doesn't work once you get it running, it's just that no one has thought support through, merely expecting you to just know what to do. The emails tell you to check the manual, the manual doesn't have anything, and around you go again.

That aside, the streaming element, once we did get it working, works well.?Audio codecs supported include WMA (Standard V9), AAC, MP3, MP2, Real Audio (cook), and you can?shuffle through your music as long as you've got your PC or Mac turned on and the Flowserver software running in the background. Don't worry it isn't a resource hog.

Back to the website and it's not just about frustration, but actually a chance to set-up some of the elements of your radio like managing your favourite stations.?It's just a shame the website looks like it has been designed by someone who has only just graduated from "learn HTML in 24 hours".

But forget all that for the moment, you can actually get away with spending virtually zero time on the website, which is a good thing, and enjoying the cracking radio that is the Oasis Flow.?When it comes to sound quality, it is surprising how much volume this little box can generate and we aren't just talking noise. The sound is well balanced and it will happily fill your garden with music over the summer months to come.

Verdict:

The Pure Oasis Flow comes with three criticisms, but plenty of praise. Those criticisms come in the guise of the the price, software, and the fiddly control mechanism.?At ?169.99 it does look a bit too expensive, even though it offers plenty in the way of DAB, FM and Internet radio.?The second is thelounge.com - it's just badly designed.?And the third - you'd just better hope you have deft fingers.

Get past these foibles and the radio is a great device, well made, able to withstand being left out in the rain while you duck for cover, and good enough to produce a sound that you and your party guests will be happy with.

Tags: Audio DAB Radios Radios Pure Internet radios Pure Oasis Flow

Pure Oasis Flow originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Wed, 14 Jul 2010 10:45:22 +0100

Will this bring DAB to the masses?

When you think of DAB radios you automatically expect to have to pay ?50 and upwards. It's understandable: DAB radios have for the most part been expensive because they are normally made with high-end materials.?Hoping to break that mould is the Pure One Mi, a budget DAB/FM radio.

Costing ?35, the overriding element is that you get what you pay for here. The build quality is good, but it has a plastic shell and buttons rather than spoiling you with wood or metal.?Those cost-cutting measures continue to the design, which isn't too inspiring, certainly compared to previous Pure products. The small paperback sized radio features a speaker to the left, the controls (again with plastic buttons) to your right.

There is a two-line mono LCD display above those buttons to give you the radio station details, volume level, and to remind you whether you are listening to DAB or FM.

The buttons offer you scan, volume, presets (16 in total), menu and source. Before you get excited, source merely allows you to jump between FM and DAB.?There is no Aux in, or headphone out for that matter.

The top of the radio sports an extendible aerial, and as long as we were in the right location we had no problems picking up radio stations on DAB (we tested the radio in Ascot and central London).

Power is either provided by mains, with a power cord included, or the company's ChargePAK battery technology. Frustratingly there is no standard battery option. If you want to go portable you'll have to buy a ChargePAK rather than nipping down to your local corner shop and stocking up on AAs.

When it comes to performance, there is little to say. The Pure One Mi works, sounds okay, but isn't going to blow you away, as you would probably expect for the money.?Think of this ideally situated at the garage, office, car fitting shop or on a building site and you're on the right lines.

Verdict:

Pure has created an affordable entry into the DAB market with the Pure One Mi, allowing you to get your favourite digital or FM radio channel on the go and on the cheap before the analogue signal gets switched off (scheduled for 2015).

The One Mi fits a niche market, and because of that will probably do very well, but this is one of those gadgets that just delivers what it has to, rather than going out of its way to impress.

Tags: Audio Radios DAB Radios Pure Pure ONE Mi

Pure One Mi radio originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Tue, 13 Jul 2010 12:00:00 +0100

Can this improve on the Huawei E5830?

Three has updated the modem it uses for its Mobile Wi-Fi (or Mi-Fi as some people call it) service to the Huawei E585 model, the older one being the 3 Mi-Fi Mobile Wi-Fi (Huawei E5830). Confused? You shouldn't be, but is it just a number change or is there a reason to ask for an upgrade??

If you were to quickly glance at the two side-by-side you would struggle to see the difference when turned off. They are both the same pebble size, both feature a display at the top and a big "3" logo at the bottom and both offer microSD card support, allowing you to expand your storage options.?So what actually is the difference?

Well the newer E585 now features a far more useful OLED display, detailing a number of key bits of information that help you understand what the hell is going on.?It's as if the company had heard us.

We say that, because that was our biggest complaint with the E5830: it was hard to really understand what was actually going, as the multi-coloured lights present in the older model didn't really tell you much.?Gone are the confusing buttons on the right-hand side of the unit, and in its stead is one single power switch that lets you turn it on and off.

Also added, is a new monochrome OLED display that gives you signal strength, an indicator as to whether not you are connected to 3G or HSDPA, the amount of devices you have connected to the hub, battery level, which network you are on - although before you get excited it's locked to 3 - and most importantly for those that are worried about data usage; how much data and time you've spent/used in that session.

The good news though, is that the screen actually tells you what is happening rather than just a series of coloured icons. If you've got no network connection it will tell you. If your signal is super strong you get a message letting you know that too.?It's just so much easier than before.

But it isn't just the hardware that has changed. Getting online is considerably easier too. Turn it on, select the wireless network you've created, punch in the password and away you go. No extra buttons to press or hoops to jump through.

If that wasn't enough to impress, mobile operator 3 has created a hub which is now available for Windows, Mac and Linux users; meaning the dongle can be used to access the Internet without having to install any software.

Type in 3.home and you get whisked away to a panel that shows you information like data usage, text messages, your account details, and for some reason shortcuts to your favourite sites like Twitter and Facebook.?You also get a second graphical display of battery life and connectivity info.

It's also through here that you get access to your microSD memory card, if you have one installed in the device, and through the system you can share files with any of the other four users (five can use the device at once) on the network.

That's handy if you aren't already signed up to services like Dropbox, for example.?And yes, you can view those files on devices like the Apple iPad, although uploading and downloading is not possible.

Running the unit in the field is incredibly easy. In fact there are just two things that could set you back: network coverage and battery power.

Network coverage is easy to explain - if you don't live or work in a good Three coverage area then this isn't going to work - it is as simple as that. As we've said, the device has been locked to Three, so if you wanted to switch to another operator then you're stuck unless you want to get into the murky world of updating the firmware.

The second is battery life. On and connected you'll get around 4 to 5 hours on a single charge, although this will vary depending on how hard the unit has to work to get a connection.

PC and Mac users get a USB cable in the box that will let you charge and surf at the same time. But that feature isn't available for the iPad or iPod touch users obviously.?It's not the end of the world, but it's something you should bear in mind, however what it does mean is that you can connect multiple devices and not worry about a direct USB connection.

Verdict:

We loved the original Mi-Fi, but were frustrated by the lack of information available to us. Here Three, with the help of Huawei, has answered those questions in spades. You get connection details, battery status, how many devices are connected and even how much data you've used.

The only option it is missing is a continuous monthly total, so you could see how much data you are using over a set time-frame, rather than just the session. You can see it within a sub menu on the 3.home site, but not on the dongle.

That combined with a decent pricing structure, ?49.99 as a pay as you go option, or ?39.99 and ?15 a month for 5GB data a month makes this very affordable.

If you've yet to jump on the dongle bandwagon and you are looking to do so, as long as you've got good 3 coverage in your area, this is definitely worth a punt.

Related links:

• Link - 3

Tags: Gadgets MiFi 3 Huawei Huawei E585 Phones Wi-Fi Dongles Three mobile

Three Mi-Fi Mobile Wi-Fi (Huawei E585) originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 12 Jul 2010 19:59:02 +0100

Just a facelift?

The Xbox 360?has been around for some time now, so following the revamp from Sony of its PS3, it's only natural that Microsoft would want to get in on the re-invigorating action for its console, boosting sales and fixing a couple of issues along the way.?In steps the new Microsoft Xbox 360, or as some call it the Xbox 360 Slim or as the name on the back of the console itself refers to it, the Xbox 360 S.

Before we talk about the new slim console, it's probably worth just noting what you get in the box. In short you get virtually nothing that isn't core to the unit. Yes, there is the console, the power pack, a controller and a headset, but there is no way of actually connecting it to your TV. You'll need to bring the HDMI cable yourself.

Now that we've got that out of the way the first thing you'll notice about the new console is the size. As you might expect, it's now considerably smaller. Not Nintendo Wii small, but reduced enough that at the Microsoft press conference at E3 in Los Angeles, Microsoft hid the new Xbox 360 inside the old model before the big reveal. Incidentally the same trick Sony performed when it launched the slimline PlayStation 2.

The new Xbox 360 S also brings with it a new glossy design that is even more masculine than the previous matte outings. There is nothing family friendly about this device when it comes to looks, strange considering Microsoft's gunning for a family audience with the Kinect later this year, but that doesn't mean it looks awful.?Out are the rather large bulbous edges; in are stark lines, hard edges and plenty of grills.

Part of the new design is now a very large fan grill on the top (when laid flat), plus two grills/vents that engulf both sides. It's all to stop it over-heating you see - something previous models were prone to. But while that means it is considerably quieter, and we mean quiet enough that you can have it on in the background without you noticing, it also means that you can't put anything else on top of it like you could with the original design (yes that's what probably caused the overheating in the first place).

While Sony opted for a curved top with the PS3, Microsoft has gone for a flat design with air vents, and it is something you should account for in your TV stand if space is tight.

The design has also seen the front of the console cleaned up as well. The IR receiver has been hidden behind the casing, while the memory unit slots are gone altogether.?You still, however, get two forward facing (hidden) USB sockets for connecting things like USB storage drives.

For those really into playing spot the difference, the DVD eject button has shrunk and become touch sensitive, while the On switch is now sliver rather than the same colour. Gone too is the Red Ring Of Death (RROD) warning sign, replaced instead with the?red eye of doom.

Around the back and there is plenty of change too. Microsoft has added an Optical S/PDIF socket for audio buffs, two further USB sockets bringing the rear total to three and the overall console total to five, and a dedicated AUX socket to power Kinect for Xbox 360 when it becomes available later this year.

Besides that there is an AV socket, an HDMI socket for connecting to your TV, Ethernet and of course the power.?There is now also a Kensington lock so you can bolt it to something rather than having it nicked when someone comes to burgle your house.

As before the hard drive is fully replaceable and rather than a big clunky thing sticking out of the side (as with the Xbox 360 Elite) it's now neatly tucked away out of sight behind one of the side vents in its own caddy; accessing it is very easy.?The final outside change is the power brick; and yes it's still a brick, which you could easily fend off evil foes with, but now around half the size.

Inside, Microsoft?hasn't changed the graphical power, the processor power or much else for that matter although it has added Wi-Fi and increased the storage. For the first time the Xbox 360 console won't require a network cable ready to use behind your TV, neither will you have to go out and buy a wireless dongle for another ?60.

And the wireless connection is no slouch either, as you'll get wireless b/g/n support, which meant that we enjoyed fast downloads (obviously based on your connection speed) via Xbox Live just as if we were connected via a wire.

In our tests playing a number of games online and downloading content via Marketplace, we were more than happy with the performance the wireless connectivity brought. And the lack of cabling meant that for the first time (we've never bought the wireless dongle out of principle) we could play from our bed.?

Also new is the default storage the Xbox 360 S comes with. You now get 250GB of storage at your disposal. That's a lot of saved games, or movies and adding new content is very easy thanks to the system now supporting any old USB storage drive you've got, rather than just Microsoft-branded options.

Of course it's not all add, add, add; Microsoft has still left out a Blu-ray player for high definition videos other than those that you've downloaded, and the DVD playback quality still isn't great when compared to what the PS3 or other regular DVD players are capable of through upscaling. If you're buying this as an entertainment hub expect to have to download to enjoy decent quality movies.

If this is going to be your first Xbox 360 then migrating data isn't something you are going to have to worry about, but for those looking to upgrade from an Xbox 360 Elite then it's worth thinking about.?There are a couple of ways to do this: mainly via Microsoft's Hard Drive Transfer Cable, or the cheaper option of a USB storage drive you might have lying around.

While the USB drive option is cheap, unless you've got a large drive you'll be there for some time copying the data across. The simplest way by far is to use the Hard Drive Transfer Cable. Whip out the drive from your old Xbox 360, plug it into the cable and then to your new console via one of those five USB sockets. 30 seconds later you are done. It's well worth the ?15.

Once you've got everything set up, and your data transferred it's time to play. Turning on the console you'll notice no real difference, the software interface is the same, the gaming experience is the same, the games you've played will still play. Remember this is just a hardware refresh rather than an overhaul of how the Xbox 360 works.?

We played all the games you would expect (Alan Wake, Spilt/Second, Gears) on the hottest weekend of the year in the UK. Yes the console got hot, but no hotter than we would have expected after 10 hours of gaming and watching movies.

Verdict:

The Xbox 360 S is a great evolution, but not revolution, of the Xbox 360 console. It adds plenty to the mix that was missing before.

You now get a quieter device that you'll feel happy to leave on. You also get the bigger hard drive for storing more movies and games. You get the wireless connectivity, and if you are planning on getting Kinect when it comes out later this year, as well as the power socket so you don't have to plug it in to a wall socket as well.?The catch is that the Microsoft hasn't really improved the insides - this isn't the Xbox 720.

Should you upgrade? It really comes down to how much you want the new box. You've probably already overcome the wireless issues and you can expand your storage options via bolt-on hard drives. You'll really only want to upgrade to reduce the noise.

The Xbox 360 S is a great refresh and one that Microsoft should be praised for. We like it, and with Kinect coming soon, these should fly off the shelves.

Nintendo - it might be time to panic.

Related links:

• Compared - Xbox 360 Slim vs Xbox 360
• News - Xbox 360 "slim": the next era in Xbox gaming

Tags: Gaming Xbox 360 Xbox 360 slim Xbox 360 S Microsoft Consoles Gaming hardware

Xbox 360 S originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 12 Jul 2010 13:31:22 +0100

Does this lightweight 24x super zoom deliver as an affordable all-in-one?

Not to be confused with the WB500 pocket camera from the same manufacturer, with the extra "0" in the WB5000's model number comes an extensive, all encompassing focal range equivalent to 26-624mm in 35mm film terms, or a 24x optical zoom.

It proves a very useful tool for pulling faraway objects closer at maximum telephoto setting without the user having to take a step forward, as well as achieving broader reproductions of landscapes thanks to the 26mm extreme wide-angle setting. And, for those hoping to shoot handheld through the entirety of the range, anti-shake here comes in the form of both electronic and optical image stabilisation.

The WB5000's snug DSLR-like styling leads us to expect a pretty decent bridge camera feature set to match, capable of coming up trumps with regard to most subjects and conditions, and the Samsung makes a stab at it with a maximum 12.47 effective megapixel photo resolution, 1280 x 720p HD video clips at 30 frames per second with dedicated record button, plus capably large fixed 3-inch 230k dot LCD for both picture composition and review.

There's additionally the alternative of electronic viewfinder, or EVF, located above, the eye relief for which juts out quite prominently and has its own activation button on the camera's backplate, with dioptric adjustment wheel at one side for the myopic.

Despite the bigger zoom capacity the WB5000 is reasonably lightweight at 398g without card or rechargeable battery, and overall offers manageably portable dimensions of 116.1 x 82.8 x 91.1mm. The provided grip is just large enough to be comfortably workable without adding much in the way of bulk to overall proportions. It looks and feels a little plastic-y however compared with the alternative of a more robust 30x Fujifilm HS10 at ?100 more. But it does include a stereo microphone just above the lens barrel, and, as we usually find with Samsung, here the ?299 asking price seems about right.

The camera powers up in 2 seconds with a press of the recessed activation button on its top plate, the surround of which glows a calm Samsung-branded blue when in use; the lens automatically extending to maximum 26mm wide-angle setting. Just above the lens barrel, and behind the stereo microphone, lives the pop-up flash, which has its own manual activation button on the slope to one side.

The lens takes just over 2 seconds to travel from maximum wide angle to extreme telephoto - which is quick, given its focal range. When fully extended the plastic lens barrel does look rather vulnerable to accidental knocks, or a strong wind however.

As one would expect, the WB5000's handling falls somewhere between a high-end compact and entry level DSLR. With a choice of point and shoot functionality via the scene/subject recognising Smart Auto, or manual control proposed by the P,A,S,M options ranged around the top-mounted shooting mode dial with just the right amount of "give", focus and exposure is determined in an instant with a half press of the large and springy shutter release button. This is encircled by a lever for operating the zoom on the sloping front of the handgrip.

Stills and video clips are written to optional SD or SDHC card, a slot for which is provided under a sliding catch at the base where the rechargeable lithium ion battery also lives.

Thankfully the full extent of the optical zoom can be utilised when filming video, although inevitably some slight operational noise is picked up by the microphone located above; something that wouldn't be noticed however if recording a busy scene or conversation.

There's a choice of three JPEG compression levels - Super Fine quality single shots committed to memory in all of 2 seconds - or, as on a DSLR proper, the ability to shoot JPEGs alongside uncompressed RAW files, or RAW files on their own. Also enticing for enthusiast photographers is the ability to adjust manual focus, though this is tweaked in a rather rudimentary fashion that involves the user tabbing incrementally along an on-screen slider with macro at one end, infinity at the other.

Generally the WB5000's menu screens are clearly and thoughtfully laid out with white text on blue/black background, making for quick and easy navigation. Shooting functions and set-up options are tabbed through with the aid of the scroll wheel on the camera back which can alternatively be gently spun with the thumb to locate the same settings. There are additionally separate buttons for locking and adjusting exposure, here the standard +/- 2EV.

Plus, as expected, there's playback and a further "Fn" or function button that presents key shooting options in an easier to access toolbar that runs down the left hand side of the screen - much like what we're used to finding on a point and shoot compact.

In auto mode/s the WB5000 deploys what Samsung is calling Smart Face Recognition technology, that, with the ability to store up to 20 faces in the camera's internal memory, "remembers" previously captured favourite faces and biases focus and exposure toward them should they subsequently turn up in a group photo. As on Samsung's point and shoot compacts we also get a skin-smoothing Beauty mode offered, in addition to Blink and Smile Detection - so its manufacturer obviously recognises that this is a tool for photographing people, as well as landscapes courtesy of that wide-angle 24mmm setting, in the main.

On the left-hand flank (if viewed from the back) there's also a joint port for USB/AV output, but no HDMI connectivity on this model, some ?100 cheaper than the likes of Fujifilm's HS10 super zoom that adds such an HDTV-friendly feature.

Downloading images to the desktop reveals that the WB5000 is a capably consistent tool for a wide range of shooting scenarios and conditions. In fairness, we did notice some slight loss of sharpness towards the edges of the frame when shooting at maximum wide-angle and some pixel fringing between areas of high contrast, but these would only truly stand out if you were purposefully looking for such "issues".

Exposures were on the whole impressively even and colours flatteringly vivid - particularly reds, greens and blues - with skin tones rendered healthily warm as a default. If however you don't like what you see, Samsung provides the chance to make manual RGB colour channel tweaks in camera via adjustment sliders in its Photo Style Selector mode, located via a press of the "Fn" button. Pictures aren't pin sharp enough to match the results from a DSLR proper with a suitable lens, but are comparable to a high-end compact - which is what indeed the WB5000 is.

Verdict:

The "DSLR lite" WB5000 has been out a little while, so in theory you should be able to find more competitive deals than the ?299 asking price. The fact that the lowest cost we could find online at the time of writing was ?279 suggests the camera has pretty much held its value, perhaps because it still offers the best range among its manufacturer's compact family.

If you don't want all the bells and whistles or the cost of the next step up in the Samsung range, arguably its innovative mirror-less NX10 model, nor the ability to swap lenses, the WB5000 is a good fit for the relatively inexperienced photographer who feels that nevertheless they could do with a bit more lens power.

Tags: Cameras Digital cameras Compact cameras Samsung Samsung WB5000 12 megapixels

Samsung WB5000 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Mon, 12 Jul 2010 10:00:00 +0100

More of the same, or something new?

Isn't it strange how things work out? Only 1 week after the launch of APB - the slightly disappointing online action game from Crackdown creators Realtime Worlds - we get a bona-fide Crackdown sequel. And guess what - it's slightly disappointing too! Developed by Ruffian Games, a studio set up by ex-Realtime World employees, Crackdown 2 is actually a better game than APB, but it's also less ambitious. Instead of taking Crackdown as a starting point and pushing the game's free-roaming super-heroics to a whole new level, it's content to take Crackdown and give you more of the same.

In fact, "more of the same" is putting it mildly. Crackdown 2 actually takes place in a post-apocalyptic version of the Pacific City setting of the original. Locations have been wrecked and damaged, but this is fundamentally the same location you've already explored in the previous game. Your superpowers work in much the same way, and the most basic game mechanics are identical. You run, leap and drive around the city, fighting against the hostile forces that are terrorising the local population. Through clambering up skyscrapers, shooting enemies, engaging them in hand-to-hand combat, blowing things up and racing or running foes over you collect specific colour orbs.

Collect enough, and the relevant ability is upgraded. In effect, you're rewarded for doing what you like doing best. If you're a shooter, you'll naturally earn more orbs for shooting, and you'll get improved marksmanship and access to a better range of weapons. Spend more time as a toe-to-toe slugger, and you'll develop incredible strength and be able to punch your foes across the plazas, or pick up cars and throw them around like toys in a sandbox. Agility, however, is the real cornerstone of Crackdown. The more you explore, the further up you climb, the more orbs you'll find and the easier and more thrilling you'll find it to get around. Why walk when you can hurl yourself from rooftop to rooftop at incredible speeds?

To make character development that bit faster, Crackdown also threw in challenges, like rooftop races or checkpoint races, where winning meant a healthy boost to your agility or driving skills. To these, Crackdown 2 adds renegade orbs; orbs which you have to chase on foot or in a vehicle in order to win a bigger ability boost. It says something that this is one of the game's most noticeable upgrades.

Now, let's not get too carried away with the criticism. Crackdown was a lot of fun, and Crackdown 2 is a lot of fun as well. The basic mix of platform-style exploration and freeform combat is thoroughly engaging, and the whole ability system means that you feel rewarded and more powerful the more the game progresses. You might have seen the city before, but there's still that great sense that, if you can see a distant point or rooftop, then there's going to be some way up to it, even if you'll need more agility first, and the improvisational nature of the combat - ripping up a lamp-post to make a giant baseball bat, or throwing explosive crates then shooting them before they land - never gets old. On a minute by minute, second by second basis, Crackdown 2 still works very well indeed.

And where Ruffian has made changes, these changes aren't always for the better. The post-apocalyptic setting means that many of the lurid colours of the original have been replaced by greys, browns and other sombre tones, and as the basic moving graphic-novel style of the game is unchanged, the results can look dull in many areas of the city. Low civilian populations don't exactly help, and what atmosphere there is comes mainly from the radio chatter from your Agency commander, who's goading comments, stinging put-downs and gung-ho encouragements never fail to make you grin.

Meanwhile, the varied gangs of the first game have been replaced by two factions; a terrorist organisation known as Cell, and a bunch of brutal zombie mutants known as the Freaks. Cell forces can be found either roaming the streets or fortified at specific points throughout the city, while the Freaks wander around en-masse after dark, attacking the local population and attempting to swamp you whenever given the chance. While new enemy types are added to both groups as the game goes on, this can make the game feel samey after a while.

Most seriously, Ruffian has ditched the old eliminate the gang by working your way up the hierarchy structure of the first game, in favour of a new structure, where you have to take over three control points then detonate a UV explosive in an underground lair nine times over, all to rid the city of the Freaks. There is some variety in terms of where the control points are placed and the constraints you face and weapons you can use in the climactic Freak battle, but Crackdown 2 suffers from the same problem as the original Assassin's Creed; it feels repetitive, and there's not enough exciting secondary mission content. After a while, the routine begins to feel like a bit of a chore, particularly as Ruffian's main device to add difficulty is simply to add more enemies, and give them bigger guns.

As a single player, this is a problem, and if you're planning to play Crackdown 2 on your own then I'd take a minute before you pull the purchase trigger. If you haven't played the original, it's very cheap these days and is arguably the stronger solo game.? If you have played the original and you're content with something that will feel a bit like an extended mission pack, then you go ahead, but it has to be said that after Crysis, the brilliant infamous and the slightly less brilliant Prototype, it's a disappointment that Crackdown 2 isn't anything more than that.

If you're planning to play with friends, however, then Crackdown 2 is a much stronger proposition. With two, three or four agents working together, the repeated objectives fall much faster, and the massed battles are a lot less of a grind. What's more, the results of four super-powered fools on the streets at the same time are consistently hilarious.

Everyone wants to show off, so before long you're all picking up trucks and hurling them at the Freak armies, doing outrageous stunts in vehicles with a comrade clinging to the back, and throwing around high-explosives like there's no tomorrow - which there won't be in Pacific City if you insist on carrying on like that. Even played with strangers, dropping in and out of your game or another's, Crackdown 2 suddenly becomes a fantastic game. Played with someone you know, it's a riot.

Verdict:

It's a shame that Crackdown 2 does so little to progress from the brilliant original, but it's a solid game for solo players, and one of the finest co-op games in town. The revamped setting and structure aren't completely successful, but dig in and enjoy the anarchy and you'll still find a lot of game to love.?

Tags: Gaming Xbox 360 Crackdown 2

Crackdown 2 - Xbox 360 originally appeared on http://www.pocket-lint.com on Fri, 09 Jul 2010 15:42:35 +0100