Reviews
Dell recently refreshed its popular XPS 13 with new hardware to bring it up to date with current CPU and storage offerings. The updated model now sports a Skylake-based Intel processor and a Samsung PM951 NVMe solid state drive, plus a few minor tweaks to its already impressive design. When the current iteration of the Dell XPS...
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While discussions about the best desktop gaming PCs tend to be divided between do-it-yourselfers and fans of pre-built PCs, gaming laptops spark a different debate, typically between large system builders versus, smaller boutique system integrators. Many of the industry behemoths kick-started or bolstered their gaming...
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Amazon’s current generation of Fire tablets offer something for everyone, from the budget-conscious user who wants a super-cheap $50 tablet, to the consumer who’s willing to spend more in exchange for a larger format device with all the bells and whistles. Today, we’re going to take a look at Amazon’s Fire HD 10...
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Rise of the Tomb Raider has hit the PC lining it up in our gun sights for graphics, gameplay and performance analysis. The game launched on the Xbox family of consoles a few months back and has since been ported to PC thanks to NIXXES Software. It’s a competent console to PC port updated with many graphics settings...
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The 2-in-1 and convertible PC space has changed significantly over the past couple of years. What was once a cluttered mess of kludges is now a well-defined market segment packed with refinement, power, and plenty of options. You could partially credit Microsoft's Surface line for making 2-in-1s an object of desire...
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At a glance, you may assume the phone we're testing here is one you've seen before -- a Nokia Lumia 1020 clone perhaps? Despite having a similar circular camera fixture on the handset's back side, suggesting a strong focus on photography, this is actually a newly released phone produced by ASUS. The ASUS ZenFone Zoom...
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Samsung leveraged its extensive NAND flash and storage IP and took aim at the high-performance portable storage market last year when it launched its impressive Portable SSD T1 external drive. There are countless portable flash drives and a multitude of external storage enclosures on the market that can house any standard 2.5” SSD. However,...
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One of the myriad benefits of Intel’s strong focus on power efficiency in recent years is that relatively high performance processors are now able to fit into tiny form factors. Case in point, the recently released Intel Compute Stick for 2016. That little gizmo has a quad-core processor, 2GB of RAM, 32GB of storage, 802.11ac Wi-Fi and...
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Huawei may not be a household name here in the US, nor does the brand name roll off the tongue easily for many Americans, but you might be surprised to learn that the Chinese networking and telecommunications manufacturer is the 3rd largest smartphone supplier in the world, behind Apple and Samsung. Much of that...
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The last time we saw OCZ, there were tearing up CES with an upcoming NVMe solid state drive that could transfer data at upwards of 2.7GB/s that was features alongside a few new SATA-based solutions, like the Trion 150 series we’ll be showing you here today.The OCZ Trion 150 is an update to last summer’s Trion 100, which was the first drive...
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If three's company, we'd say Motorola has gone and made a full-on family out of its Moto 360 smartwatch. Hot on the heels of its second-generation Moto 360 comes the Moto 360 Sport, an Android Wear timepiece designed to compete not with TAG or Sony or Samsung, but with FitBit, Polar, Garmin, and TomTom. The ruggedized or sports smartwatch...
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To look at the Dell Precision 15 5510, you wouldn’t know that it sits in the middle of Dell’s workstation lineup. The laptop is thinner and sleeker than you might expect a workstation-class laptop to be and the premium carbon fiber palm rest gives the system a decidedly high-end vibe. But the Precision 15 5510 is...
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To expand on our coverage of Intel’s Z170-chipset, we now turn our focus to another Gigabyte motherboard for Intel Skylake CPUs. The Gigabyte Z170X-UD5 Ultra Durable motherboard is up at the plate and has the budget-builder firmly in its sights. Conversely, the company’s pricey Z170X-Gaming G1 motherboard, which we...
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When ASUS released the ZenFone 2 Laser, the company’s goal was to offer a premium smartphone experience with strong camera performance at an affordable price. On the surface the ZenFone 2 Laser has many of the key features of a premium phone, including an octa-core SoC with Adreno graphics, dual active SIM...
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If you like the idea of using a stylus with your mobile device, then you probably prefer the precision and additional functionality over the convenience of a fingertip. That, or you've picked up a brand-new HP Pro Slate 8, a tablet targeted at working professionals that includes a rather useful and unique accessory dubbed the "Duet Pen" that...
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We had good things to say about Asus’ super-slim ZenBook UX305 when we evaluated it early last year. Attractive, sturdy, and downright tiny, the UX305 was a good value for the price, and it had good looks too. A year later, the ZenBook is back with the updated UX305CA, so we got one in to see if the newer version is...
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In a broad sense, there are two types of keyboards in this world—those that use mechanical key switches and those that don't. If that sounds like something a keyboard snob would say, so be it, this editor stands guilty as charged, and happily so. We can accept that not everyone will find just cause to spend a premium...
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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, which goes by the moniker RN214. The big deal with...
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We dug the original Intel Compute Stick that launched last year. If you recall, the original Compute Stick was a tiny, Atom-powered device that could turn any HDMI-equipped display into a basic PC. The low-power nature of the Compute Stick meant it was ideally suited for every-day, less-demanding computing tasks, and...
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Though it still hasn't grabbed consumers like some manufacturers had hoped, the smartwatch market is growing rather quickly, and a number of good options are currently available. For some users, price may be one of the key factors holding them back from buying a smartwatch. While many watches cost at least $250, and...
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Dell has some enticing new hardware on tap for its newest Inspiron 7000 series laptops, including the latest and most powerful Intel Skylake processors and NVIDIA GPUs, but the computer maker sent us a decidedly modest version for this evaluation. PC makers usually load their review systems to the hilt, in an effort to make them perform well...
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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 rounded up four AC3200 routers from Netgear, D-Link, TrendNet, and Asus. We then added...
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