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Josh Norem

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Recent posts

Updated: 2/10/2017 -  Since we initially launched this article, Netgear assisted with resolving a technical issue we were experiencing with 802.11ad connectivity and performance with the Nighthawk X10 router we had in for testing. As... Read more...
Yesterday Chinese company LeEco assembled the global media to announce a barrage of new products destined for the US market, and signaled its intention to take on Apple, Samsung, Google, Amazon, Tesla, Netflix, and Disney all at once. The... Read more...
At this point we've reviewed quite a few high-end AC routers, including tri-band routers, flagship dual-band models, and even the latest MU-MIMO devices too. However, the one portion of the market we haven't covered much is the one that... Read more...
Gigabyte, Corsair and Intel held a press event in California on June 30th to show off some of their new hardware. Though Intel just talked broadly about its thoughts on the PC gaming market (it's growing, and they are committed to it... Read more...
A second wave of 802.11ac wireless routers have begun to appear, and the new must-have feature is MU-MIMO, short for Multiple User, Multiple Input, Multiple Output. We already reviewed the first two MU-MIMO routers we could get our hands on from Linksys and Netgear, and now Asus has entered... Read more...
On Thursday, Lenovo summoned the tech press to San Francisco where it took the wraps off two new mobile phone platforms that could both be game changers. It unveiled the world’s first Project Tango-enabled phone in the Phab2 Pro, and... Read more...
Internet privacy is kind of like a VCR or CD player, in that one day our kids will ask us “you used to have that?” It’s staggering how much of our online activity is tracked, catalogued, and used for a wide array of purposes, most of them... Read more...
The second wave of 802.11ac routers are now shipping, and they offer a tantalizing performance benefit over the previous routers we’ve reviewed (at least with their older firmware) — the ability to broadcast multiple data streams to... Read more...
You read the headline correctly – this is not a review of a Synology NAS, but instead a wireless router. If this sounds unusual to you, you are not alone. Synology is a Network-Attached Storage (NAS) company, or at least it used to be, as it's now taking all its networking expertise and... Read more...
Netgear has released a new line of high-end-yet-consumer-friendly NAS drives dubbed the RN210 family. They are available in both two-and-four bay models, and this time around we’ll be examining its two-bay model, the RN212, and everything we cover here applies to the four-bay model as well... Read more...
The router game is heating up once again, after being dormant for what seemed like an eternity, thanks to new iterations of the Broadcom XStream platform. We first examined this platform for 802.11 AC routers back in October when we... Read more...
Shortly after we published our AC3200 router roundup, Linksys contacted us and wanted to throw one of its routers into the ring. We agreed, and the company sent us its Linksys EA9200 Tri-band Smart Wi-Fi router, which like the others in the roundup is a tri-band router that uses the Broadcom... Read more...
Wireless routers are going through somewhat of a renaissance right now, thanks to the arrival of the 802.11ac standard that is "three times as fast as wireless-N" and the proliferation of Internet-connected devices in our homes and... Read more...
Anyone who follows the NAS game will likely recognize the name Synology, but we’d wager most home users aren't quite as familiar with them. That’s simply because Synology storage devices have typically targeted a more advanced crowd, such as readers of this website. If you had ever met someone... Read more...
The WD My Cloud EX2100 is a new prosumer-oriented NAS drive from WD that continues the company's adventures in the realm of "personal cloud" storage. These drives are aimed directly at people who use Cloud storage such as Dropbox, Google Drive, Box.com, and others. The marketing speak from WD... Read more...
Gigabyte's Brix line-up of small form factor systems is the company’s answer to the teeny, tiny NUC from Intel. These ridiculously small PCs pack all the power of a laptop, or a budget desktop, into a box small enough to fit in your palm. These wee PCs are marketed to non-gamers and people who... Read more...
The Western Digital Passport Wireless is a member of a new class of storage devices that combine run-of-the-mill USB storage with wireless hotspot and media center functionality. These devices essentially marry what used to be two separate drives - an external USB device and a media device... Read more...
The hard drive market has become a lot less sexy in the past few years thanks to SSDs. What we used to consider "fast" for a hard drive is relatively slow compared to even the cheapest of today's solid state drives. But there are two areas... Read more...
Now that Intel's newest LGA 1150 motherboard chipset is out in full force, numerous enthusiast-class boards abound. We've already taken a look at five Z97 motherboards from Gigabyte, EVGA, and MSI, and this time around we're reviewing the Asus Z97-Pro (Wi-Fi ac). This board is one of Asus'... Read more...