Digital Technology News, Camera, Camcorder and Cool Gadget Reviews

The all-new Motorolla Droid 3 is an ample sized handset that is great for both business and pleasure. It is especially good for those that need to make a lot of conference calls as it offers a front facing camera in order to provide users with a video calling features.

The 8-mega pixel camera allows users to take quality snaps on this handset whilst on the go. The quality of this camera is almost as good as some of the digital cameras on the market today, which allows you to encase both your phone and camera in one as appose to carrying several pieces of equipment around with you. This is also a great option for those that love to share their memories with others, as these pictures can be sent to friends and family via picture text or alternatively uploaded directly onto any one of the many social networking sites. Read the rest of this entry »

If you are a fan of listening to music or other audio whilst travelling or in public places, the likelihood is that you own a pair of headphones or ear buds in order to keep your media private and not bother those around you. Listening to music is a great way to pass the time on a boring train or plane journey, or to accompany other activities such as jogging or working.

Listening to music may help you concentrate, as it helps to block out other ambient sounds around you that you may find distracting. The best forms of listening equipment, in this case, are noise cancelling earphones and headphones which not only block out other sound to keep you isolated and able to listen to your music in peace, but also prevent you from disturbing other people.

Noise cancelling headphones, whether passive (isolating your ear to keep other sound out) or active(emitting sound waves to negate intrusive noise before it reaches your ear) are a great way to stop ambient sound from disturbing your solitude. The passive type are more effective at blocking out high frequency sounds like conversation, whilst the active kind best reduce lower frequency, droning noise such as traffic. The best headphones are obviously a combination of the two. Read the rest of this entry »

GA-790FXTA-UD5 is a feature-packed ATX motherboard. Its fast AMD 790G chipset isn’t the latest, but matches new AMD 890-based boards with an overall score of 120 in our benchmark tests.

Gigabyte has fitted a dedicated SATA3 controller that provides two SATA3 ports alongside the six SATA2 ports, while another supplies two dual-purpose USB/eSATA connections on the back panel.

You’ll also find eight USB ports, two of which are USB3, and two PS/2 ports. There are six driver-definable 3.5mm analogue audio ports and optical and coaxial S/PDIF outputs, plus eight-pin and four-pin FireWire ports and, unusually, two 10/100/1,000Mbit/s Ethernet network ports. Read the rest of this entry »

Gigabyte’s 890GPA-UD3H is a full ATX AM3 motherboard with a whopping six SATA3 ports, plus an extra two SATA2 ports that are served by the same chip that handles the board’s legacy IDE port.

There are two PCI-E x16 slots, which run at x8 if both are populated with cards, three PCI-E xl slots and two PCI slots. Installing a graphics card with a large cooler will block the slot below. Four memory slots allow you to install up to 16GB of memory at a maximum speed of 2,000MHz.

There are just six USB ports on the back panel, including two USB3 ports. There are another four USB headers on the motherboard, which can supply up to eight more ports, but you’ll need brackets or case connectors to use them. There’s also a PS/2 port and a FireWire port on the back. Read the rest of this entry »

This latest incarnation of the Ultra HD has a host of improvements, including 50fps video and image stabilisation, so it handles motion on the part of the operator or the subject far better.

The rechargeable battery lasts for around 90 minutes, and the 8GB memory stores two hours of footage.

Next to the micro HDMI connector is the new FlipPort for connecting accessories.

The smaller Flip Mino 3rd generation is similarly priced and specified, but lacks the FlipPort.

MSI has crammed plenty of features on to this micro ATX motherboard, including USB3 and five SATA2 ports. It supports the latest hexacore AMD Phenom II processors and provides a wide range of overclocking options.

There are two PCI-E x16 slots, but they’ll both run at 8x if you have two cards in them. There’s also one PCI and one PCI-E x1 slot, although the latter will be blocked if you install a large graphics card. Four memory slots can take up to 16GB of DDR3 RAM running at up to 2,133MHz.

The integrated ATI Radeon HD 4290 managed only 3.5fps in Call of Duty 4, so it’s not up to 3D gaming. However, it’s well equipped for dual-monitor or home cinema use, with VGA and DVI outputs as well as an HDMI port capable outputting full HD video, although HD audio will be downsampled to DVD quality. There are also six 3.5mm stereo outputs for the built-in Realtek ALC889, which can be configured for 5.1 surround sound audio with a mic input or 7.1 surround sound without. There’s also an optical S/PDIF output if you need a digital connection to your speakers.

The backplane also provides six USB ports, including two USB3 ports. There’s also an eSATA port.

Asrock’s 880CXH-USB3 is slimmer than most ATX boards, measuring 305x224mm. It’s also somewhat short of ports and uses the budget AMD 880CX chipset.

There’s only one PCI-E x16 slot, but there’s little benefit to be gained by using two PCI-E graphics cards. Most expansion cards will fit into either the two PCI-E x1 or three PCI slots, and a double-height graphics card won’t block any other ports. Other features include five SATA2 connectors and four memory slots capable of taking up to 16GB of RAM at 1,800MHz.

At the back are an eSATA port and six USB ports, including one USB3 port. Confusingly, both the USB3 port and one of its USB2 neighbours are blue. There are five 3.5mm analogue audio ports and an optical S/PDIF port. You can also output audio and video from the HDMI port, which the integrated ATI Radeon HD 4250 can use to output full-quality Blu-ray video and DVD-quality audio. It’s not up to modern 3D gaming and managed just 3.8fps in our CoD4 benchmark.

The 880GXH-USB3 isn’t that fast, but it’s cheap, with lots of features. If you don’t need SATA3, it’s a great way to save a bit of money.

Nvidia and AMD (formerly ATI) are certainly fighting for the attention of gaming enthusiasts, releasing numerous cards around the £200 mark. Back in July 2010, Nvidia launched the excellent GeForce GTX 460  for just shy of that amount. More recently, AMD waded in with its HD 6870 for around £180 and the Radeon HD 6950  for £220. Now Nvidia is back with the GeForce GTX 560 Ti, again at around £200.

In fact the 560 Ti is available at a range of prices. This is because Nvidia has encouraged manufacturers to produce overclocked versions of the card, so much so that there are few stock versions available. Our benchmarks below were run on the reference card from Nvidia, which has a core clock speed of 822MHz and 1GB of GDDR5 memory running at 1GHz. However, cards with higher clock speeds are available at the same price as the reference cards.The Palit GeForce GTX 560Ti Sonic Edition, for example, has a core clock speed of 900MH. Read the rest of this entry »

The PicoPix looks like a miniature version of a standard projector and is designed to be carried everywhere. It uses an LED lamp and liquid crystal on silicon (LCoS) technology to project a 52in diagonal image at 7ft. It can run on batteries for two and a half hours, and play MP4 videos from USB drives.

LCoS is much like digital light processing (DLP) technology, but where DLP uses an array of moving micro-mirrors to reflect a light source either through the lens or away from it, depending on whether the pixel is on or off, LCoS uses liquid crystals on top of a reflective surface. These block light or allow it to reach the reflective surface below – if light is allowed to hit the mirror, it’s reflected out through the lens. In DLP projectors, the light then passes through red, green and blue filters in a spinning colour wheel to produce three colour images, one after another. The fast speed of the wheel tricks your eyes into seeing a full-colour image. Read the rest of this entry »

Adding an automatic document feeder (ADF) to a scanner is a great way to capture multiple documents with the minimum of fuss. Plustek has a reputation for producing low-cost products, so it had a chance to undercut the competition with its SmartOffice PS286 Plus.

The PS286 Plus comes with several spare parts and a software package that includes optical character recognition (OCR), business card and image-management applications. Although it’s not aimed strictly at use on the road, it’s supplied with a hard-wearing bag.

The scanner has a flip-up input tray with two sets of adjustable paper guides and a fold-down output tray. The output tray feels sturdy, but the input tray is made from a flimsy silver plastic.

The TWAIN driver is easy to use, but you must manually select simplex or duplex scanning, colour or mono. We received further driver warning messages during a multi-page duplex job, after which we discovered that a side of one sheet failed to scan and the auto-rotate hadn’t worked.