Reviews
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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Samsung has been aggressively bolstering its solid state drive line-up for the last couple of years. While some of Samsung’s earliest drives may not have particularly stood-out versus the competition at the time, the company’s 830 series and more recently the 840 series of solid state drives—especially the 840 Pro--have...
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Mainstream All-In-One PCs have become increasingly more popular in recent years, but AIO workstations remain a rare breed. After all, workstations typically require more horsepower than your average AIO, and IT folks demand better access to a computer’s internals than most ordinary AIOs allow. That makes HP’s Z1 workstation...
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Google announced its Chromecast media streaming device last week and immediately caused quite a stir amongst technology enthusiasts. Not only was the Chromecast seemingly easy to use, but its low $35 price point made it attainable by virtually anyone. It didn’t hurt that Google was throwing in a three month trial of Netflix with...
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Considering just how much we all rely on smartphones every day, they’re shockingly fragile. All it takes is one quick drop or spilled drink to end in disaster for your expensive gadget. For as quickly as phone technology is advancing, durability for many smartphones has remained a problem. That’s where Samsung hopes to make some...
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Google made a brilliant decision last year to take the bull by the horns and deliver its own brand Android tablet to the masses. Built by ASUS to Google's specifications, the original Nexus 7 awarded a patient (and eager) audience with a stock Android experience wrapped in an affordable package that was high on value and low on feature concessions....
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Nokia's battle in the global smartphone race is an intriguing one, and those who follow technology have long wondered if the company's decision to hitch its wagon to Microsoft was a wise one. When Stephen Elop came in as CEO, Nokia was in a rare position: it could choose which platform it wanted to support for the foreseeable future. Of course,...
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We have a confession to make (well, several actually, but all the rest date back to our college days, and some secrets are best left untold). Reviewing monitors isn't as fun as it once was. It's not that we've grown jaded over the years, but plain and simple, the monitor market has become stale, lacking the kind of 'gee-whiz' innovations that...
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NVIDIA made quite a splash at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show when they first unveiled their SHIELD portable gaming device. If you missed the original announcement, or the myriad of related posts we’ve put up about the device since then, SHIELD is a Tegra 4-based portable gaming machine that’s packing a 5-inch...
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Nokia has been trying hard to play catch-up in the smartphone race for a long time now, and as Microsoft's strategic partner with the Windows Phone operating system and ecosystem, they've got their work cut out for them, with a gridiron full of Android and iOS devices offering compelling and powerful solutions. And so, Nokia, perhaps...
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A couple of weeks back, SanDisk launched a new line of Class 10 UHS-I microSDHC / microSDXC cards targeted at performance conscious consumers. When describing the cards, SanDisk’s director of retail product marketing Susan Park said, “The SanDisk Extreme microSDXC card allows users to do more with their devices…Our...
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Intel's roll-out of their 4th generation Haswell-based Core series processors has been a little pokey, quite frankly, when you compare this launch to the deluge of products that hit the market when Ivy Bridge broke cover last year. Regardless, Apple always seems to have an inside track on Intel's latest technology and so, as it...
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Convertible laptops and ultrabooks had a big presence at this year’s Consumer Electronics Show (CES). At CES, Lenovo revealed its ThinkPad Helix which it marketed as having a "groundbreaking 'rip and flip' design" that enables this 11.6-inch ultrabook to transform into a powerful Windows 8 tablet. When detached, Lenovo claims the Helix...
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Coincident with the launch of NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 700 series of products, EVGA unveiled a new invention of its own: the ACX cooler. ACX is an acronym for "Active Cooling Extreme" and as the name suggests, it’s a cooling solution for high-end graphics cards. To date, we have looked at two ACX-equipped graphics cards, the EVGA...
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