Reviews
Falcon Northwest is a big name in a very niche market of luxury PCs. The company is known for special touches like custom cases (think FragBox) and mind-blowing, artist-rendered panel images. The company has also built the rest of its reputation on blazing PC performance. Falcon Northwest recently shipped its Tiki to take on the other small...
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In the ever-intensifying smartphone war, clear lines are being drawn. The only two mobile phone manufacturers making any notable profits at present are Apple (with iOS) and Samsung (with Android). Despite the fact that Android as a whole is dominating from a global market share perspective, players such as LG, HTC, Pantech, and Sony are scrapping...
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EA took the wraps off Battlefield 4 this past week, offering players a chance to experience a taste of what the game offers via an early beta. We've spent time with the game, tested its early performance, and come back to report the findings. AMD, of course, has been talking up the Battlefield 4 combination with a vengeance, highlighting the...
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Over the past few years, Corsair has steadily ramped up the number and types of computer chassis it manufacturers. The high-end 700D and 800D have been followed by a number of midrange products and one uber-expensive deluxe model, the massive 900D. The case we're reviewing today, the 750D, is meant to drop into the sub-$200 price bracket,...
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Over the past few years, a handful of mobile graphics companies have emerged as key pillars of the industry. The top dog, by far, has been Imagination Technologies, with Qualcomm, Nvidia (during the Tegra 2 / Tegra 3 era) and ARM all picking up significant businesses of their own as well. But now, there's a new kid on the block -- a company...
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A ton of AMD related news hit over the last couple of weeks, thanks in no small part to a multi-day event AMD held in Honolulu, Hawaii the company held to showcase all of its upcoming GPU technology. GPU14 Tech Day, as AMD called it, began with a quick talk from AMD’s Corporate Vice President, Visual Computing Division Raja Koduri at...
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ASUS, like the other major motherboard manufacturers, has an extensive lineup of boards that now support Intel’s 4th-generation Haswell processors and come packing the Z87 chipset. There are motherboards in ASUS’ quiver that run the gamut from gaming boards to workstation boards to consumer-focused boards and beyond, but the company...
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The Zeiss Cinemizer OLED glasses are great for watching movies on-the-go, but command a steep price and offer little utility beyond this function. And despite inevitable comparisons to the yet-to-be-released Oculus Rift, the Zeiss Cinemizer OLED glasses don’t provide a true ‘virtual reality’ experience, and are thus...
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Let me state right off the bat that I'm primarily a PC gamer. You might not know it if you set foot in my living room, where you'll find an Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and Nintendo Wii all jockeying for attention in my home theater rack, but outside of sports titles and the occasional party-type game played through the Kinect, I play games on...
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For a time, Apple's annual tradition involved the unveiling of a new iPhone at WWDC. Then, things changed, and the iPhone's annual coming-out party began to happen a lot closer to the all-important holiday shopping season. But perhaps the most interesting change of late is how the iPhone line is evolving. At this year's gala, two new iPhone...
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Despite some fierce competition, Samsung has experienced an impressive level of success in the mobile space and has managed to nurture the Galaxy brand into a household name. Part of that success was due to the company unifying its ultra mobile products (phones, tablets, phablets, etc.) under the Galaxy brand, and thus, Samsung decided...
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A year ago at PAX Prime 2012, the Oculus Rift was a fusion of electronics, barely more than an idea and literally held together with duct tape. Even then it delivered an impressive demo running a VR-optimized, playable version Id Software’s Doom 3. What a difference a year makes. The Oculus Rift, circa 2012 at PAX Prime This year PAX...
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Today, for the first time since Atom first debuted, Intel is launching an updated version of the core that does more than integrate additional function blocks and lower power consumption. The tablet iteration of the new SoC is called Bay Trail, and it's aimed at the red-hot tablet and handheld market currently occupied by various chips from...
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If you're a proponent of the desktop, don't worry, the sky isn't falling on your form factor. Yes, we've read the same reports you have, the ones pointing out how traditional PC sales are shrinking in the wake of a mobile revolution that has consumers turning to tablets and smartphones for surfing the web and logging into Facebook. There's...
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You have to appreciate a good external hard drive that faithfully ferries important data from one place to another, while safely stashed on a drive that’s wrapped inside a slick-looking, durable chassis. These days, the storage capacity on a typical and relatively inexpensive external hard drive is large; 1TB is a standard size,...
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If not for Apple's impending launch of the next-generation iPhone, the Moto X would be one of the year's most notable smartphone launches. And honestly, that's saying something. 2013 has also been a year where the HTC One and Samsung Galaxy S4 came to light, but no Android phone has captured as many eyes as Motorola's simply-titled "X." The...
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This most recent metamorphosis of the PC hasn’t been kind to the high-end desktop processor segment. While the industry as a whole continues to focus on the steadily growing ultra-mobile market, and releases new products in rapid succession, there have only been two major flagship desktop processors released since the Intel Core i7-3960X...
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It's that time again. The time of year when students and parents frantically hit e-tailers that offer fast shipping in order to get that all-important back-to-school technology into a dorm room or backpack before classes begins. It's back-to-school season, and whether you've started classes recently or are awaiting...
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Dell has updated its Alienware series of gaming notebooks with the refreshed Alienware 18, and what an update it is. In addition to a new generation of hardware, with both Intel's Haswell and NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 780M rumbling under the hood, Alienware has completely redesigned the look of the chassis, keyboard, and touchpad, all of which...
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Zotac has been making ultra-small form factor systems for quite a while now. You can check out a number of our reviews of various ZBox systems right here. If you read those previous reviews, you’ll notice that most of the systems have been built around low-power platforms like AMD’s E-Series APUs or Intel’s Atom processors....
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Unless you’re a gamer or a content-creation professional that requires a lot of computing horsepower, the latest crop of All In One PCs probably seem very attractive. AIOs tend to be quite the lookers, with sleek lines, large and crisp displays, touch capabilities--and of course, a small footprint. We’re starting to see AIOs with...
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There are a lot of really great smartphones on the market today. With various manufacturers competing for their slice of the smartphone market, there are a lot of factors to consider when shopping for one of these high-end phones. Although some consumers may find the myriad of options confusing or overwhelming, we find it exciting. After all,...
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