This plasma TV has the best picture ever tested - The Panasonic VT60

 

CNET Editors' Rating

4.0 stars - Excellent

$2,200.00 to $2,599.99

The good: The Panasonic VT60 produces the best picture quality of any TV we've ever reviewed, equal to or better than our in-house Pioneer Kuro reference; exceedingly deep black levels and excellent shadow detail; well-saturated colors and excellent skin tones; industry-leading sound quality; extensive features including touch-pad remote, voice control, and onboard camera.

The bad: Extremely expensive; forthcoming ZT60 might have even better picture quality; worse bright-room picture than that of the Samsung F8500; somewhat humdrum design; camera is limited, and facial recognition is a gimmick.

The bottom line: The Panasonic VT60 has one of the best pictures of any TV we've ever reviewed, but it's soon to face some tough competition.

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A Roku alternative for media hoarders

$79.99 

CNET Editors' Rating

4.0 stars - Excellent

The good: The WD TV Play offers an improved interface and a greater selection of content than before. Setup is easy and the connection stayed solid during testing. The WD TV Play is one of the best values available in the market.

The bad: Missing some important apps, including Amazon Instant and live sports apps. The device couldn't playback all test videos despite listed compatibility. The gaming apps aren't very worthwhile.

The bottom line: The WD TV Play is the best alternative to Roku and Apple TV for viewers looking to access their personal media collection.

 

Read the Full Review

iPhone 5 full review: Finally, the iPhone we've always wanted

CNET Editors' Rating

4.0 stars - Excellent

The good: The iPhone 5 adds everything we wanted in the iPhone 4S: 4G LTE, a longer, larger screen, and a faster A6 processor. Plus, its top-to-bottom redesign is sharp, slim, and feather-light.

The bad: Sprint and Verizon models can't use voice and data simultaneously. The smaller connector renders current accessories unusable without an adapter. There's no NFC, and the screen size pales in comparison to jumbo Android models.

The bottom line: The iPhone 5 completely rebuilds the iPhone on a framework of new features and design, addressing its major previous shortcomings. It's absolutely the best iPhone to date, and it easily secures its place in the top tier of the smartphone universe.

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Acer Aspire S5 Review: A Serious MacBook Air Challenger

PCWorld - If you're looking for an Ultrabook with the superslim good looks of a MacBook Air, enough computing oomph to handle multimedia and general business tasks, plus a good-enough battery life, take a long hard look at the Acer Aspire S5. Especially the superslim good looks part.

The S5 is less than three quarters of an inch at its thickest and weighs 2.6 pounds--impressively light for a notebook with a 13.3-inch display. In almost every way, the S5 fulfills the promise of the Ultrabook as articulated by Intel: It's extremely portable, very fast, and endowed with decent battery life.

True, you can find several Ultrabooks with better battery life, and maybe one or two with superior performance--and the Aspire S5 has its fair share of minor drawbacks. But none of the ones we've seen are thinner.

That's thanks in no small part to an innovative motorized panel that Acer calls the MagicFlip, which rolls down to conceal ports on the rear bottom edge. This both protects them when not in use and slims down the S5's profile so it's both thinner and lighter than the current 13.3-inch MacBook Air.

But the motor makes a somewhat grating noise, and sometimes it seemed to roll up of its own volition. Also, I worry that the motor, activated by a button on the top right of the platen, adds one more part that could break.

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Sony's stellar LED TV better than 4K? - Review of the Sony XBR-65HX950

(Credit: Sony Electronics)

CNET - Forget that 84-inch 4K monstrosity grabbing all the headlines. If you've been holding out for the best Sony TV of 2012, this is probably it.

Yes, the XBR-HX950 is smaller and lower-resolution, and yes, it's still extremely expensive at a beginning list price of $3,500. But I expect it to have better picture quality than the 84-incher, along with just about every other LED TV.

Before I get into the reasons why, allow me to indulge in a (recent) history lesson. Last year the Sony XBR-HX929 was hands-down the best-performing LED TV on the market until the Sharp Elite came along. Due largely to their use of full-array local dimming the two sets were quite a bit better than the next-best alternative (Sony's own NX720) and also cost a lot more. Compared with the Elite, however, the XBR-HX929 is a relative bargain -- its 55-inch size currently sells for around $2,000 less than the smallest Elite, a 60-inch model.

At CES in January, Sony's TV announcements conspicuously omitted mention of a successor to the XBR-HX929, which the company continued to describe as "current" -- until now. The XBR-HX950 previewed here replaces the HX929, and according to Sony offers some improvements. We expect it to beat the 2012 HX850 in picture quality, at least equal the HX929, and perhaps challenge the 2011 Elite (Sharp has yet to announce any successor).

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Review - Acer Aspire V5-171-686

CNET - 

3.5 stars - Very good

The good: An excellent set of specs and features in the Acer Aspire V5-171-6867 include a Core i5 processor, 6GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, HDMI, USB 3.0, and even Bluetooth, all for a surprisingly low price, and stuffed into a very small Netbook-like body.

The bad: It has a cramped-feeling keyboard and touch pad, weak battery life, and poor speakers, plus an uninspired, thick design.

The bottom line: The Acer Aspire V5-171-6867 crams the horsepower of a full-fledged budget ultrabook into an 11-inch ultraportable, for several hundred dollars less than most equivalent products. It's a great budget laptop to consider, but sacrifices have been made to shrink down that much computer into a tiny package.

Read the Full Review

 

The $99 Sony Xperia Ion for AT&T

CNET - 

The good: The affordable Sony Xperia Ion has solid call quality and swift 4G LTE that ties into Sony's vast entertainment empire.

The bad: Lackluster images and video belie the Xperia's claimed 12MP camera. It's also held back by an old processor and an outdated OS.

The bottom line: The $99.99 Sony Xperia Ion looks like a good Android deal but its weaknesses make it not worth even the budget price.

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Microsoft Surface RT

 

CNET - The tablet wars are no longer a two-horse race between Apple and Google.
Four days after Microsoft invited the press to Los Angeles (and after four days of Web-wide speculation as to why), on Monday, June 19, 2012, the company finally unveiled Surface.

Surface is a line of tablet devices running the company's next-generation Windows operating system and marks Microsoft's first foray into the ever-expanding tablet market.

Yes, you read that correctly: Microsoft will be building and branding its own tablets, effectively competing with its own hardware partners such as Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Lenovo.    More

Dell Inspiron 14z (June 2012) Review

 

CNET - When it comes to laptop design, you generally get what you pay for. There are, however, rare exceptions when more expensive laptops feel like budget models, and low-cost systems look like they should cost more.

The recently refreshed Dell Inspiron line has a bit of that price-bending effect, especially in the form of the Inspiron 14z, a modestly priced ultrabook that looks great, includes discrete graphics, and costs only $899. (Less impressive configurations start at $699.)

Dell's redesigned Inspiron 14z (pictures)

 

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Insanely great plasma TV - Panasonic TC-P55ST50 review

Panasonic TC-P55ST50 review 

 

 CNET -

The good: The affordable Panasonic TC-PST50 series exhibited outstanding overall picture quality, characterized by exceedingly deep black levels with great shadow detail, accurate colors, and solid bright-room performance. Unlike LCDs, as a plasma it has superb off-angle and 
uniformity characteristics. The styling is attractive and the feature set well-chosen, including excellent onscreen help options.

The bad: The ST50 uses more power than competing LCD TVs, and doesn't perform as well in bright rooms as those with matte screens. It doesn't come with 3D glasses, and it showed more crosstalk in 3D than some competing TVs. The ST50 is only available in 50-inch and larger sizes. Three HDMI inputs is one fewer than most midrange TVs offer.

The bottom line: With flagship-level picture quality for a midlevel price, the Panasonic ST50 series sets the value standard among videophile-grade TVs.

 

Samsung Chromebox Series 3 review

 CNET -

The good: The Samsung Chromebox offers an attractive, low-risk entry point to the experimental world of Google's Chrome OS.

The bad: Absent features and occasional software and hardware incompatibilities mar a supposedly simple user experience.

The bottom line: The attractive, fairly priced Samsung Chromebox desktop turns Google's Web-based Chrome OS into a not entirely unreasonable option for certain low-cost PC shoppers.

Full Review

Lenovo Thinkpad X1 Carbon: The Ultralight, Semi-Rugged Carbon Fiber Ultrabook

Gizmodo -

Tablets may be the next big thing in mobile computing, but don't count out ultrabooks just yet. At least not until you've given Lenovo's Thinkpad X1 Carbon—a feather-weight, carbon fiber workhorse a closer look. It's tough, it's light, and you don't have to be an office drone to crave it.

The X1 Carbon it the latest addition to Lenovo's popular X1 series. Despite a spacious 14-inch screen, the X1 Carbon tips the scales at a scant three pounds—making it the lightest rig of its size—thanks to its carbon fiber roll cage. The screen displays at a native 1600x900 resolution. The system supports up to 8GB of integrated DDR3, runs 64-bit windows 7 Pro, and has that Intel Ivy Bridge goodness you've been hearing so much about.

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Hands On: Dell’s New XPS 8500 Desktop

Dell refreshes its between-Inspiron-and-Alienware tower with Intel “Ivy Bridge” horsepower and SSD-enhanced storage.

Dell has given a shot of Vitamin SSD to its top-of-the-line consumer desktop.

Replacing the XPS 8300 in the slot just below the company’s Alienware hardcore gaming systems, the Dell XPS 8500 targets content creators, multimedia buffs, and moderate gamers with new Intel “Ivy Bridge” processing power; a choice of graphics cards topped by AMD’s 2GB Radeon HD 7870; standard Wi-Fi and long-overdue USB 3.0 ports; and a variety of multi-terabyte storage options, most of which team a spinning hard disk with a solid-state drive for extra-fast startup.

The $1,999 (plus monitor) flagship configuration that Dell sent to PCMag combines a 3.4-GHz Core i7-3770 quad-core, eight-thread CPU with 16GB of DDR3-1600 memory (Dell promises 32GB systems will be available later this year), the Radeon HD 7870 card, a 256GB Samsung solid-state drive C: and 3TB Seagate 7,200 rpm drive D:, and a Blu-ray burner. Other configurations of the Intel H77 “Panther Point” chipset-based desktop will pair 2GB and 3GB hard drives with either the 256GB SSD or, more affordably, a 32GB SSD using Intel Smart Response Technology for optimized drive caching.               More

Ubuntu 12.04 arrives and it’s great

Summary: Canonical’s latest Linux distribution, Ubuntu 12.04, is now available for your home and office and it’s a winner.

ZDNet - The wait is over. The final version of Canonical’s Ubuntu 12.04, Precise Pangolin is out. To download your copy of this popular Linux distribution head to the Ubuntu download page. If you’re already using the last version, Ubuntu 11.10 you can now upgrade automatically upgrade to 12.04 with Update Manager. If you need more help with your upgrade see the Upgrade from Ubuntu 11.10 to 12.04 LTS page.

LTS, you ask? That stands for long term support. This is the Ubuntu version that will be supported for five years, through April 2017. If you have a business, and you’ve been thinking about using Ubuntu on your desktops or servers, this is the version you want.

However, before leaping to the Ubuntu site to download the freshest bytes and bits, you may want to wait for a bit. Canonical tells me that the site is currently getting overwhelmed and some people are not being able to get into it. For me, the site and download links worked, but at speeds of about 100Kbps, they certainly aren’t fast.

If you really can’t stand to wait for a minute, take Jorge Castro, a Canonical staffer’s suggestion, and use one of “mirrors hosted on Amazon’s S3 service, which has a bunch of capacity and should be fast for users where an Amazon region is close:”       More

Asus Essentio with Intel’s new CPU

The good: The Asus Essentio CM6870 is a reasonably well-equipped mainstream PC that is one of the first to feature Intel’s new third-generation (aka Ivy Bridge) Core i7 CPUs.

The bad: This boring commodity desktop has little to recommend it over similar systems, and Asus also focused too much on pleasing everyone with the configuration.

The bottom line: Intel’s new CPUs are the most compelling feature in this new Asus Essentio CM6870 desktop. Otherwise, it’s just another midtower.

Read the Full Review!

The Best Inexpensive Point-and-Shoot Camera with Wi-Fi

Smartphone cameras have gotten so good—and sharing photos from them has gotten so easy—that in most situations, a simple point-and-shoot camera seems like an unnecessary inconvenience.

Gizmodo - But point-and-shoot manufacturers, eager to keep their products relevant, have begun equipping the cameras with built-in Wi-Fi transmitters. These combine a legitimate camera’s lens and sensor with a phone-like ability to quickly share photos without a cumbersome cord. Even with the new feature, a solid camera can come in under $300. Wi-Fi point-and-shoots to the rescue! Right?

For this test, we chose the Canon Elph 320 HS ($280) and the Samsung WB150f ($230). We wanted to know how these cameras stacked up against each other, and also how the features measured up in common tasks—like posting a photo to Facebook—when compared against most folks’ default tool for the job, the iPhone 4.               More

Unboxing the HTC One S for T-Mobile

PCMag.Com - The HTC One S has landed on T-Mobile. We heard a lot about it back at Mobile World Congress, so we could barely wait long enough to take some unboxing photos before firing it up and putting it through its paces.

The first thing you notice when taking the HTC One S out of the box is just how thin and light it is. At just 0.35 inches thick, it’s the thinnest 4G smartphone on T-Mobile. But there’s plenty of power hidden beneath that slim form factor. The One S is powered by a next-generation, dual-core, 1.5-GHz Qualcomm MSM8260A Snapdragon S4 processor, which should allow for breakneck performance. And this is among the few phones available to sport the latest version of Android, 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich). You wouldn’t know that immediately, though, because HTC has skinned the OS to look a heck of a lot like it does on just about every other HTC phone. 

Read More & Watch the Slideshow!      

Google Glasses First Look: Would You Wear These Augmented Reality Specs?

Gizmodo - We first heard rumors about Google’s augmented reality glasses a few months ago, and now in a post on Google Plus, the company revealed “Project Glass”along with some early concepts and prototype designs. These specs look like the freaky science fiction concept they are. Would you wear them, though?

Watch this video of what the world would look like from behind these glasses. It’s like Iron Man except instead of important world-saving information you’re answering your friend’s text messages and learning about delays on the subway. The Google[x] team that’s working on the project says they’ve opened it up to the public to solicit ideas about what people actually want from a set of augmented reality specs.          More

Review: HP Envy 14 Spectre (Laptop)

The good: The HP Envy 14 Spectre has a unique glass-covered design and packs a lot of features into a slim 14-inch ultrabook body, plus its multitouch response is great for a Windows laptop.

The bad: It’s expensive, especially considering the standard components, and feels heavier than it should. The glass wrist rest can be awkward.

The bottom line: The first big high-design laptop of 2012, the HP Envy 14 Spectre is a bold experiment that largely succeeds, if you’re willing to pay a premium for it.

There may be a reason most laptops are anonymous-looking gray boxes. When you do see a unique design, such as the Dell Adamo XPS or Acer Iconia, it’s often too quirky to catch on, or else the company behind it doesn’t give it enough time to find an audience before ditching the idea.

Read the Full Review!

Review – Motorola Droid Razr Maxx

The good: Despite a beefed-up battery, the Motorola Droid Razr Maxx has a slim, attractive, and durable design with the same gorgeous display, 1.2GHz dual-core processor, and fast Verizon 4G/LTE data speeds as its predecessor. It retains powerful multimedia chops and tight security features.

The bad: For such an advanced smartphone, the vague promise of a future Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich is disappointing. Also, while a stronger battery is great, it’s still not user-removable. People with small hands will find it hard to wrap around the phone’s wide frame, and the 8-megapixel camera is unimpressive.

The bottom line: The Motorola Droid Razr Maxx proves that a powerful Android superphone can remain thin yet still promise marathon-worthy battery life. If you can live without Ice Cream Sandwich and have big hands, the Maxx is extremely compelling.

Read the Full Review!