Gadgets And Tech Peripherals Reviews And News
Keyboards, mice, Bluetooth speakers, smart displays and speakers, DIY maker products like Raspberry Pi - there are all these other gadgets and gizmos in the tech world and we'll cover them here.
The pixels output by your PC's graphics card are only as good as the monitor that displays them. Attach a shiny new GeForce RTX 3080 Ti to a bargain basement, slow 1080p panel with a refresh rate of 60Hz and you'll likely get what you had coming: blurring, color shift, dull images, and an unpleasant experience. We...
Read more...
The 2022 edition of the Consumer Electronics Show has concluded. We didn't attend this year's show in Las Vegas in-person, but that's mostly because the majority of the biggest players in the market didn't show up either and we attended a handful of private briefings at other venues. The severity of the...
Read more...
Experimenting with SiFive's HiFive Unmatched RISC-V development board over the last few weeks has felt a bit like stepping back in time. The experience left me feeling a bit nostalgic. Picture this. It's 1997. I'm a high school sophomore. I head over to my friend's house after class because a long-awaited CD with something called "Slackware...
Read more...
This past Summer, LG created a new product category with its UltraGear Gaming Speaker (GP9), though not entirely from scratch. The GP9 combines aspects of a soundbar with a portable Bluetooth speaker, and also serves as an external USB soundcard with a built-in Hi-Fi Quad DAC (ESS9038 Pro) to bring your headphones to...
Read more...
As enthusiasts, we're often most enamored by the latest and greatest graphics cards, processors, and storage technology in our endeavors to squeeze as much performance from our systems as possible. However, it is the human interface devices -- like our keyboards, mice, and monitors -- that can have the most...
Read more...
The humble webcam has seen a surge to prominence fueled by the rise of web conferencing and remote work, spurred by the COVID-19 pandemic. Only a few short years ago, a webcam could be buried away below the display of a laptop and few users would complain or even notice. With those days behind us, consumers and professionals alike have been...
Read more...
We all know that bigger is better, right? At least in generalities, it's often true. More CPU cores help performance in multi-threaded workloads, while high frequencies boost performance in lightly-threaded tasks. With graphics, it's all about more as well; more shading resources, more ROPs, more VRAM, and a wider bus means more frames per...
Read more...
SilverStone released a handful of new cases and coolers a few months back, targeting an array of price points for DIY PC builders. One of the more affordable additions to the line-up was the SilverStone Fara B1 mid-tower we're evaluating today. The Fara B1 is priced to move at about $60, but it has the looks and features of much more...
Read more...
Gaming on a much larger screen has always had this almost unnatural appeal. Over the years, many enthusiasts likely have tried to hook up a PC to a much larger display for gaming bliss, whether it was a TV or projector via S-Video, component or DVI, or nowadays, the biggest possible LCD one can afford. When LCD TVs...
Read more...
Fully-assembled MiSTer FPGA DIY console It seems like it wasn't too long ago that we crowned the Raspberry Pi 4 as one of the best retro game consoles around. Indeed, the Raspberry Pi foundation's latest single-board computer still a low-cost DIY powerhouse. However, retro gamers are picky about one thing that haunts...
Read more...
SilverStone has been in the AIO (all-in-one) liquid cooling game since 2013, so the cooler we're reviewing today should be a fairly refined product with years of deep feedback and iteration built in. Back in the day, closed loop, AIO liquid coolers were relatively limited in terms of options, but SilverStone was able...
Read more...
Although being a geek was not always chic, geek culture has been celebrated in cinema and on television for decades in one form or another. In some ways, it is a genre unto itself. The appreciation of science, fantasy, and intellectual concepts have given birth to a wide range of both celebrated and cringe worthy...
Read more...
Office chairs, whether they be for a home office or a corporate work space, are a personal thing for any self-respecting desk jockey. For most folks, it's all about ergonomics and comfort rather than style points, though certainly industrial design aesthetics shouldn't have to be compromised. Autonomous has made a...
Read more...
Over the past few months, we have seen a spattering of Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) routers enter the fray, including the ASUS ROG GT-AX11000 and Netgear Nighthawk AX8, both of which we recently put under the microscope. There was a caveat to our testing, however—we had to benchmark them using Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) hardware...
Read more...
We are no longer on the cusp of Wi-Fi 6 (otherwise known as 802.11ax) connectivity -- it has arrived -- just not in earnest yet. It will take some time before the Wi-Fi 5 (802.11ac) standard is truly shoved aside in favor of the new kid on the block, the one that is faster and more adept at juggling multiple wireless devices simultaneously....
Read more...
You've just finished meticulously routing cables in your new battlestation and are basking in the subtle glow of RGB LEDs, but your setup is not ready yet. Your old generic mouse has served you well, but its bargain-bin sensor is holding you back. Your crosshairs are unsteady and trying to select individual units is...
Read more...
There is a fledgling wireless standard that effectively renders the vast majority of home networks out of date -- don't panic though, your stuff isn't necessarily obsolete. It is called Wi-Fi 6, if using the simplified nomenclature that the Wi-Fi Alliance introduced last year, or 802.11ax if you want to stick with the...
Read more...
Fractal Design released their highly acclaimed Define S2 PC case a little over seven months ago and they are already back with a new iteration; the Fractal Design Define S2 Vision RGB. That's a mouthful, but even if the name doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, the DIY PC chassis is easy on the eyes. The Fractal...
Read more...
Long-time enthusiast will remember the Corsair Hydro H50. It was one of the first closed-loop water coolers on the market and it changed the game. Though the H50 was popular at the time of its release, it was a bit of a head-scratcher, because its performance and installation weren't ideal. Consumers bought it up...
Read more...
When you think of Dell or its Alienware brand, the first thing that comes to mind is probably PCs, and not peripherals. Be that as it may, Dell is uniquely positioned to capitalize on the peripheral market as part of a larger play, one in which it can sell gamers on a unified ecosystem through its Alienware division...
Read more...
Patriot is perhaps one of the lesser-known PC component and accessory manufacturers in comparison to large players like Kingston or Corsair, but the Northern California-based company has actually been around since 1985. About 10 years ago, Patriot launched its Viper Gaming brand, which offers high-performance...
Read more...
Every year, Black Friday and the Christmas shopping season seem to become more momentous. We have already seen several large retailers such as Amazon, Best Buy, Microsoft, Sam's Club, Staples, and Target "leak: Black Friday adds in an attempt to offer select deals early. Even with so many deals out...
Read more...
